Laura Lippman: What The Dead Know

It was still early by college standards, and he was almost out of the dorm before he crossed another student’s path, a plump, big-eyed girl who seemed unnerved by such an alien presence. Not just male but suited, older, so obviously not a student or even a teacher.

“Police,” he said. “ Baltimore County.”

She didn’t seem to find much comfort in this. “Has something happened?”

“No, just making a routine public-safety check. Don’t forget, lock your doors and avoid unlighted areas in parking lots.”

“Yes, Officer,” she said solemnly.

The March morning was cold, the campus desolate. He found his car in an illegal spot not far from the dorm. He had thought it was an apartment house when he tried to drop her off last night. The evening was coming back to him. He had gone to Souris ’s, in need of a change from the usual place, Wagner’s, where his coworkers went. There had been a gaggle of girls at the end of the bar, and although he’d told himself that he was just coming in for a quick drink, he soon felt compelled to cull one from the herd. He hadn’t gotten the best one, but the one he had gotten had been pretty good. Eager to please, at any rate, blowing him in his car on Allegheny Avenue. He drove her back to this dowdy-looking midrise, quiet and hushed at 2:00 A.M. It had been his intention to watch her turn her key in the lock and then beat out a quick good-bye beep on the horn, but she had clearly expected more, so he’d followed her to her room and anted up. He was pretty sure he had made a good show of it before falling asleep. So what was up with the sour puss this morning?

A campus cop was getting ready to stroke his car, but Infante flashed his badge and the guy backed off, although he was clearly itching to argue. Probably the highlight of the poor mope’s day, fighting over a ticket. He checked his cell phone-Nancy Porter, his former partner, whispering urgently into the phone, “Where are you?” Shit, he had missed roll call again. If he wanted to get to work in a reasonably timely fashion, he’d have to choose between a shower and breakfast, a real one that would settle his stomach. He decided he could handle being queasy for a few hours better than he could tolerate his own stink, so he drove to his apartment over in Northwest Baltimore. He could always claim that he had been chasing a lead on the…McGowan case, that was it. The inspiration came to him in the shower, and he stayed there longer than he should have, letting the hot water beat down on him, the night’s odors rising up from his pores. He’d been looking for the girl’s ex-boyfriend, not the most recent one, or even the one before, but three boyfriends ago. Come to think of it, that wasn’t a bad idea. The girl’s death, an old-fashioned stab-and-dump in Gunpowder Falls State Park, had a brutality to it that strangers seldom mustered. It hadn’t been enough to cut her. The killer had also set her body alight, igniting a small brush fire that had brought fire trucks to the scene, when she otherwise might have languished undiscovered for days, weeks, months. Citizens were always surprised when cops couldn’t find a body, but for all the endless development in the Baltimore metro area, there were still acres and acres of raw land. Every now and then a hunter stumbled on a pile of bones and it would turn out to be a vic from five, even ten years ago.

Early in his career, Infante had worked a case like that, one where murder was obvious but the body couldn’t be found. The family had been rich and connected, with enough resources to drive the department crazy. When told that the things they wanted-searches, long-shot lab work-would have taken much of the department’s budget for the year, they shrugged and said “So?” It was three years before the body showed up, not even ten yards off a state highway on the upper shore, discovered by a shy-bladder type who had walked into the weeds to take a piss. Blunt-force trauma, the medical examiner concluded, so it was a murder, all right. But there was nothing more to be gleaned from the body or the scene, and the husband, who had been the primary suspect since the start, was dead by then. The only lingering question in Infante’s mind was if the fatal blow had been an accident, another Saturday-night fight in a house that had seen no shortage of such battles, or if there had been more intent to it. He’d spent a lot of time with the husband before cancer of the esophagus got him. The husband even came to believe that Infante came around out of friendship or kindness. He put on a good show of grief over his missing wife, and Infante decided that the guy saw himself as the victim. In his mind all he’d done was give her a push, a shove, no harder than any of the other pushes and shoves he’d meted out over the years, only this time she didn’t get back up. So hubby picked her up, dumped her in the woods, and spent the rest of his days believing himself innocent. You’d think the wife’s family would have been content that he died, fast and ugly at that, but it wasn’t enough for them. For some people, it was never enough.

Infante stepped out of the shower. Theoretically, he was only thirty minutes late. But he was almost sick from hunger; and drive-through didn’t do it for him. He went to the Bel-Loc Diner, where the waitresses fussed over him, made sure he got his steak-and-eggs exactly the way he liked them, the yolks just this side of runny. He pressed the tines of his fork into them, letting the juice flow over the steak, and wondered once again: What the fuck did I do to piss off Debbie ?

“WE GOT A babbling brook of a lunatic at St. Agnes Hospital, saying she knows about an old murder,” his sergeant, Lenhardt, said to him. “Go.”

“I’m on the McGowan case. In fact, I had to catch someone this morning, before he left for work. That’s why I was late.”

“I gotta send somebody to talk to her. Late boy is the lucky boy.”

“I told you I was-”

“Yeah. I know what you told me. Still no reason to miss roll call, asshole.”

Lenhardt had partnered with Infante last year, when the department had been shorthanded, and he seemed to be more of a hard-ass since he returned to his sergeant’s duties full-time, as if Infante needed to be reminded who was in charge.

“What’s the point? You said she’s mental.”

“Mental or making shit up to deflect attention from the fact that she left the scene of a bad accident.”

“Do we even know what case she’s promising to solve for us?”

“She was muttering something about Bethany last night.”

“Bethany Beach? It’s not even in the state, much less the county.”

“The Bethany sisters, funny guy. An old missing-persons case.”

“And you’re betting she’s a wack job.”

“Yep.”

“You’re making me waste half my day-St. Agnes is about as far from here as you can get and still be in Baltimore County-to go talk to her?”

“Yep.”

Infante turned to go, irritated and angry. Okay, he deserved to have his balls busted a little, but Lenhardt couldn’t know that for sure, so it was unjust.

The sergeant called after him, “Hey, Kev?”

“Yeah?”

“You know that old expression, egg on your face? I always thought of it as metaphorical, but you reminded me this morning that it can still be literal. You been out talking to people all morning, and no one mentioned that yellow smear on your face?”

Infante’s hand flicked up, found the telltale bit of yolk at the corner of his mouth. “Breakfast meeting,” he said. “I was working an informant that might know something about McGowan.”

“You lie like that automatically?” The sergeant’s voice was not unkind. “Or are you just trying to keep in practice until your next marriage?”