John Lutz - Serial

“You mentioned trouble on the phone,” Westerley said. “What kind you got?”

“Letters.”

She reached into a pocket in the voluminous dress and withdrew a stack of white envelopes with a rubber band around it.

“They’re from the penitentiary,” she said, handing the letters to him.

He leaned forward and placed his cup on the tray. “From Vincent Salas?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

There was a total of nine letters. He peeled off the rubber band and saw that the top five envelopes had been neatly slit open. The others were still intact.

“He’s been writing regular. The first letters were kind of pleading with me to change my story, claiming he was innocent. I swear, he does seem to believe it.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Westerley said.

He removed the folded letter from the top envelope and read. It was written in a neat hand with a blue felt-tip pen. The first part was a litany of how hard life was for Salas in prison. The rest of the letter was a desperate plea for Beth to change her story so he might be able to win an appeal. Salas’s signature appeared tight and neat at the bottom.

“In a letter I got last week,” Beth said, “he seemed like he’d given up all hope of getting out, and he blamed me for what he called his predicament. Then he got nasty, Sheriff. Threatening. I didn’t open any letters after that. After a while, when he kept writing, I called your office.”

“You did right,” Westerley said. “He’s got no business harassing you like this. I’m gonna take care of it. As for any more letters that might already be in the mail, you just ignore them. Don’t open the envelopes. I’ll talk to the warden in Jeff City and see that Salas stops writing you.”

He didn’t tell her he intended to talk to Salas personally. Scare the holy bejesus out of him. As if Salas could make good on any threat.

“I wasn’t gonna call you,” Beth said. Again she touched her stomach lightly, as if it might be about to burst. “But I figured I didn’t need any more stress in the form of letters. Not at a time like this.”

“No reason for you to feel stressed. Salas can’t harm you in any way from where he is.” Westerley rebanded the letters and tapped them hard with his forefinger. “This kinda thing isn’t unusual. Losers like Salas find themselves where they need to be and don’t like it. They got nothing to do and nothing to lose, so they write letters. Might be he’s trying to gain your cooperation, through lies or fear, and get you to write back and say something his lawyer might be able to use to impress an appeals court or parole board. It’s an act played by many a guilty prisoner. You were right to call me.” He picked up the banded envelopes and waved them. “You forget about these. They’ll stop coming. They’re not your problem anymore. Far as you’re concerned, Vincent Salas is as gone as yesterday.”

She was looking at him as if he’d just preached a sermon and pronounced her saved.

He smiled, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a speech.”

“It was a speech I needed to hear,” Beth said.

Westerley finished his tea, then picked up his cap and stood up out of the creaking sofa.

“I do thank you, Sheriff.”

He held his cap in both hands, grinned, and motioned with his head toward her bulging belly. “I don’t doubt we’ll see each other soon. And if I’m not on duty, my deputy Billy Noth will drive out and transport you to the clinic.”

“That’s awful kind of you. You and Billy both.”

“You’re a taxpayer,” Westerley said. Instantly he realized it had been a stupid thing to say. Beth had no doubt been on welfare since Roy cut out after learning of her pregnancy. Westerley doubted if Roy had picked up any of the medical bills. It was more like him to preach about charity than to practice it.

Westerley moved toward the door, putting on his cap and tugging it low so the visor almost concealed his eyes. Beth hadn’t moved. With his hand on the doorknob, Westerley looked back at her. He nodded again toward her advanced pregnancy. “Everything… in there all right?”

She smiled the way she used to. Before what had happened to her. The tiny dark fleck in her left eye caught the light. “Couldn’t be better,” she said. “And I thank you for asking.”

“Speaking of asking, do you know…”

“The baby will be a boy,” she said.

Westerley didn’t know quite what to say to that. He gave her a lingering last look before leaving, as if fixing her in his mind so she’d stay as long as possible in his imagination, like an image burned into a TV screen. Then he went out the door.

It was snowing again. Much harder. The kind of snow that coated everything and made it pure and cold, but not forever.

New York, the present

Harley Renz had nicked himself with his razor this morning. Quinn was glad.

Plastered to Renz’s bulging pink jowls were two small tan adhesive squares that were supposed to be invisible and might have worked if Renz had been Hispanic. The nicks could have been what put him in a bad mood.

The office had a window that looked out on a potted tree. Its leaves were as still as an oil painting. Morning sun blasted golden glory through the tilted blinds and warmed Quinn’s bare forearm resting on the chair facing Renz’s desk.

Renz inhaled deeply before speaking, puffing out his jowls and looking for a moment like a bullfrog about to croak. “I’ve got enough to be pissed off about without you coming in here all worked up because Millie Graff’s rapist was questioned without you knowing about it.”

If Quinn was pissed off, he didn’t appear so. He seemed to choose those rare times when he displayed anger, so that in retrospect it was difficult to know if it had been real. That was one of the things about Quinn that infuriated Renz. This morning Quinn’s voice was flat and carefully modulated. The way it sounded, come to think of it, when he was pissed off.

“Exonerated alleged rapist,” Quinn corrected.

“Yeah, yeah. Who else might he have raped?”

Quinn shrugged. He didn’t want to get into that conversation with Renz. Harley wasn’t the only cop with the “everybody’s guilty of something” philosophy. Often it was used as a rationalization to bust someone’s skull.

“I feel as bad about Millie Graff’s shitty luck as you do,” Renz said.

Quinn knew that wasn’t true. “What about the other Skinner victims’ released alleged rapists?”

“I don’t feel bad about them.”

“You know what I mean.”

Renz drummed the fingertips of both hands briefly on his desk. He wanted this office visit to be over. “Weaver just finished interviewing them, too.”

Quinn sat forward. “ Nancy Weaver?”

“The same.” Renz blinked and swallowed. He obviously regretted mentioning Weaver’s name.

“Jesus, Harley! You think Weaver’s gonna keep these interviews away from the media? The way she sleeps around, she’s probably trading pillow talk with half the journalists in town.”

“Best you remember she’s Lieutenant Weaver now, an aide to the commissioner.”

“Harley-”

“She’s earned the position, Quinn. And not in the way you might think in your dirty mind.”

“ My dirty mind? You’re the one who’s gotten down and shamelessly rolled in shit in order to get ahead.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

“I grant you Weaver’s good at her job, and I don’t care about her sexual adventures. What I do care about is you sending her around to interfere in the investigation you gave me to run.”

Renz thought it might be a good time to pretend to be angry. “Listen, Quinn, I’m the goddamned police commissioner. If I want to monitor an investigation, I will.”