Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

“Uh-huh.”

“You think he got the message?”

“I did at the time.” I stopped and she stopped with me. “Detective, was Karen Nichols raped or assaulted in the months before she died?”

Joella Thomas searched my face for something-hints of dementia possibly, the fever of a man on a self-destructive quest.

“If she was,” she said, “would you go after her stalker again?”

“No.”

“Really? What would you do?”

“I’d relay my information to an officer of the law.”

She smiled broadly, a stunning flash of some of the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. “Uh-huh.”

“Really.”

She nodded to herself. “The answer is no. She wasn’t raped or assaulted, to the best of my knowledge.”

“Okay.”

“But, Mr. Kenzie?”

“Yeah.”

“And if what I’m about to tell you leaks to the press, I’ll destroy you.”

“Understood.”

“I mean, annihilate you.”

“Got it.”

She stuffed her hands in her pockets, leaned her tall frame back against a lamppost. “So you don’t think I’m just a chummy cop, blabs away to every PI in the city, that guy you took down on the force last year?”

I waited.

“He didn’t like women cops and he sure as hell didn’t like black women cops, and if you did stand up for yourself, he told everyone you were a lesbian. When you took him down, there was a lot of reshuffling in the department and I got transferred out of his department and into Homicide.”

“Where you belonged.”

“Which I deserved . So, let’s just say what I’m about to pass on to you is a little payback. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Your dead friend was picked up twice for solicitation in Springfield.”

“She was hooking?”

She nodded. “She was a prostitute, Mr. Kenzie, yeah.”

Karen Nichols’s mother and stepfather, Carrie and Christopher Dawe, lived in Weston in a sprawling colonial replica of Jefferson’s Monticello. It sat on a street of similarly sprawling homes with lawns the size of Vancouver that glistened with dew from gently hissing sprinklers. I’d taken the Porsche and had it waxed and washed before I arrived, and I’d dressed in the sort of casual summer attire the kids on 90210 seemed to favor-a light cashmere vest over a spanking new white T-shirt, Ralph Lauren khakis, and tan loafers. The getup would have gotten my ass kicked in maybe three or four seconds if I’d walked down Dorchester Ave., but out here, it seemed to be de rigueur. If I’d only had the five-hundred-dollar shades and wasn’t Irish, someone probably would have invited me to play golf. But that’s Weston for you-it didn’t get to be the priciest suburb of a pricey city without having some standards.

As I walked up the slate path that led to the Dawes’ front door, they opened it wide, stood with arms slung around each other’s lower backs and waved to me like Robert Young and Jane Wyatt on a nineteen-inch black-and-white.

“Mr. Kenzie?” Dr. Dawe said.

“Yes sir. Good to meet you.” I reached the doorway and received two firm handshakes.

“How was the drive?” Mrs. Dawe said. “You took the Pike, I hope?”

“Yes, ma’am. It was fine. No traffic.”

“Terrific,” Dr. Dawe said. “Come on in, Mr. Kenzie. Come on in.”

He wore a faded T-shirt over rumpled khakis. His dark hair and trim goatee were flecked with distinguished gray and he had a giving smile. He didn’t fit my image of the mercurial Mass General surgeon type with the bulging stock portfolio and a God complex. He looked more like he should be giving a poetry reading in Inman Square, sipping herbal tea and quoting Ferlinghetti.

She wore a black-and-gray-checkered oxford over black stretch pants and black sandals, and her hair was a lustrous dark cranberry. She was at least fifty, or so I assumed given what I knew about Karen Nichols, but she looked ten years younger and in her casual clothes made me think of a college girl at her first sorority sleepover, drinking wine from the bottle and sitting cross-legged on the floor.

They whisked me through a marble foyer bathed in amber light, past a white staircase that curved gracefully up and to the left like a swan craning its head, and into a cozy dual office space with exposed cherry beams on the ceiling, muted Orientals on the floor, and a sense of aged plumpness in the leather captain’s chairs and matching sofa and armchairs. The room was large, but it seemed small at first, because it was painted a dark salmon and precisely stuffed with books and CDs and a triumphantly kitschy half canoe that had been stood upright and turned into a case to hold knickknacks and paperbacks with weathered spines and a row of actual 33 1/3 rpm albums, mostly from the sixties-Dylan and Joan Baez sharing space with Donovan and the Byrds; Peter, Paul & Mary; and Blind Faith. Fishing rods and hats and painstakingly detailed model schooners shared space on the walls and the shelves and desktops, and a faded farm table stood behind the couch under what I believe were original paintings by Pollock and Basquiat and a lithograph by Warhol. I had no problem with the Pollock and Basquiat, though I’d never replace the Marvin the Martian poster in my bedroom with either of them, but I sat in a position so I wouldn’t have to look at the Warhol. I think Warhol is to art what Rush is to rock music, which is to say, I think he sucks.

Dr. Dawe’s desk occupied the west corner, the hutch piled high with medical journals and texts, two of the model ships, microcassettes forming a pile around a microrecorder. Carrie Dawe’s sat in the east corner, clean and minimalist save for a leather-bound notebook with a sterling silver pen on top and a creamy stack of typewritten paper to its right. Upon a second glance I realized both desks were handmade, constructed of Northern California redwood or Far Eastern teak, it was hard to tell in the soft, diffused light. Using the same process one used to build log cabins, the wood had been hand-carved and laid in place, then left to age and expand for a few years until the pieces melded to one another with more adherence and strength than could ever be accomplished with sheet metal and a blowtorch. Only then would it be sold. Through private auction, I’m sure. The faded farm table, upon second glance, wasn’t faux rustic, it was truly rustic and French.

The room might have said cozy, but it said cozy with exquisite taste and a bottomless wallet.

I sat on one end of the sofa and Carrie Dawe took the other end, sitting cross-legged, as I’d somehow known she would, idly straightening the tassels on the summer afghan thrown over the back of the sofa as she considered me with soft green eyes.

Dr. Dawe settled into one of the captain’s chairs and wheeled it over to the other side of the coffee table between us.

“So, Mr. Kenzie, my wife tells me you’re a private investigator.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met one before.” He stroked his goatee. “Honey?”

Carrie Dawe shook her head and crooked her index finger at me. “You’re the first.”

“Wow,” I said. “Gosh.”

Dr. Dawe rubbed his palms together and leaned forward. “What was your favorite case?”

I smiled. “There’ve been so many.”

“Really? Well, come on, tell us about one.”

“Actually, sir, I’d love to, but I’m slightly pressed for time and if it wouldn’t trouble you both too much, I’d just like to ask some questions about Karen.”

He swept his palm out over the coffee table. “Ask away, Mr. Kenzie. Ask away.”

“How did you know my daughter?” Carrie Dawe asked softly.

I turned my head, met her green eyes, saw a glint of what might have been grief slide along the sheen of the pupils before vanishing.