An Educated Death (50 page)

My father opened the door and I entered a hall filled with the rich smells of good cooking. He looked older and tireder and I noticed, with the jolt these observations always bring, that his hair was almost completely gray. "Theadora," he said, "Happy Easter. Your mother's in the kitchen." He held out his hand for my coat. "How's Andy?"

"Andre," I said. "He's fine. Still in one piece." He didn't like my answer any more than I'd liked the "Andy." No one who knows him calls Detective Andre Lemieux "Andy."

Mom smelled like cinnamon and yeast and her cheeks were flushed pink from bending over the stove. She straightened up and came to meet me, a regal, impressive woman, 5'10", ample, the impossible hair I've inherited cut short and crisp. She was wearing the apron I'd made her in eighth grade. Once it had been a sunny yellow decorated with bright red and green strawberries, chosen to match the kitchen wallpaper. Now, sixteen years later, the wallpaper was blue, the apron had faded to a dull yellowish gray, and the berries were just darker blotches, but she still wore it. After a hug, she backed up and examined me carefully. "You don't look as tired as usual," she said. "Are things quiet at work?"

"Never," I said, handing her the plant. She set it on the counter next to another, still stapled into its paper wrapper. "Open it now," I said. "I want to see if you'll like it."

She waved a hand at her steaming pots. "I'm busy...."

"Open it." I hadn't tramped all over the planet in the pouring rain to have my offering ignored.

With a sigh, she peeled off the heavy lavender paper and the intoxicating scent of gardenias filled the room, beating back the ham and sweet potatoes and baking bread. She pulled it out, beaming at the glossy green leaves and the profusion of rich, creamy white flowers. "Thea! It's beautiful. How on earth did you ever find such a thing?"

"Just a good detective, I guess."

Her eyes narrowed. "You're not involved in another murder, Theadora? Tell me that you're not."

"Murdering the competition, but that's all."

"Don't even joke about it, dear. You know how it upsets me. Now come in the living room. There's someone I want you to meet." She bustled out, shedding the apron as she went.

Knowing her, I was expecting an eligible young man. She never listens when I tell her I'm not interested, that I'm already involved. She believes Mother knows best. But it wasn't a young man. It was a young woman. Sitting on the couch. Well, perching on the couch. Tiny and blonde and fragile looking. Holding a toddler on her lap with her arm around a little girl. Despite the pink Chanel suit and the expensive gold jewelry, the large diamond on her hand and her superbly cut hair, she looked like a recent refugee, washed up on the shores of my mother's living room. And even though her eyes were brown instead of blue, she looked way too much like my sister Carrie. My lost sister Carrie.

I felt a surge of something like panic. My ESP isn't finely tuned but there might have been a flashing sign over the couch saying "run." I didn't know what was coming but I wanted to rush out of the house, jump in my car, and drive away as fast as I could. Instead I put out a hand and went across the room to meet her.

"Thea, this is Julie Bass. Julie, my daughter, Thea Kozak."

She smiled up at me and held out her hand. "I'm so glad to finally meet you. I've heard so much about you from your mother." She had a light, breathless, little-girl voice. With my mother hovering behind me, I leaned down, took her tiny, cold hand in mine, and was pulled into a maelstrom of chaos, deception, and death.

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from

 

Playing God

 

by

 

Kate Flora

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

The small black dog skittered into the street, shining eyes registering canine astonishment that a vehicle dared to be out at this hour. Burgess stomped on the brakes, the Explorer responding with orgasmic ABS shudders, stopping just short of the beast. Four-wheel drive beating out four-foot traction. With a look Burgess decided to take as gratitude, the dog turned and trotted away. A good result. The cops waiting with the body wouldn't have taken kindly to freezing their nuts off while their detective worked a dead dog scene.

Dog was right. Three a.m. on this icy bitch of a February night, even a murderer should have known enough to stay home. February in Portland, Maine, wasn't a benign month. Tonight, with the temp at minus ten, a roaring wind and black ice under foot, it was winter at its worst. But that was the cop's life. Get a call there's a dead body in a car on a lousy night, you don't roll over and go back to sleep, planning on working it in the morning. You get up and go.

Not that Burgess had been asleep when Remy Aucoin called it in. He'd been finishing the report on an unattended handgun death, detailing the reasons they'd concluded it was suicide. He preferred working nights. He liked his landscape gray and quiet, regarded the day's flurries of activity—all those sounds and smells and people—as intrusions into the peace that was possible at night. Some cops didn't like nights. They got used to it—when you were low man on the totem pole, you got stuck on late out—but always found it a little spooky. He'd seen it. Touch a guy on the arm in the afternoon and he'd act one way, touch him the same way at night and he'd wheel around, hand on his gun, a little wild around the eyes.

The brass preferred him working days. Their grudging compromise was some of each. So Burgess, already well into a double shift, had gotten the call. He'd put on his expedition-weight underwear, lined, waterproof boots, and a snowmobile suit. A hard-faced, middle-aged Michelin Man.

But not everyone would dress for the weather and they were going to suffer. Crime scenes didn't take less time because it was cold. Ninety above or ten below, the job required the same slow, meticulous work. You had to give the dead their due.

In fiction, crime scenes were the pristine springboards of the mystery. People didn't move bodies and carry away souvenirs, cops didn't stomp on footprints, track blood everywhere, litter the scene with their own hair and fibers. In real life, anything could happen. He'd been to scenes so compromised by cops that the perp couldn't have asked for better. Once he'd found two EMTs and a fireman handling the murder weapon. Another time a patrolman washed the glasses the victim and her killer had used "so her parents wouldn't know she'd been drinking." Hell of a piece of numbskull chivalry, with the girl already dead. He'd said that loud enough to make the papers. Gotten called on the carpet for making the department look bad. He didn't care. Truth was truth. At least the hour and the weather would keep spectators away.

He passed the neon lights of the hospital, moving fast as the slippery streets allowed. Saw the flashing light bar, only sign of life at this dismal hour. He stopped well short of the cruiser and the parked Mercedes. Stepping carefully in the existing tracks, he went to meet Remy Aucoin, the young patrol officer who'd found the body. Aucoin got out, head down and shoulders hunched defensively, like a kid expecting to be yelled at. Burgess wanted to slap a hand on his shoulder and tell him it was okay, but held back. He didn't know if it was okay, or if the kid had fucked up somehow. Looked like the kid thought he had. It usually wasn't the end of the world, but he'd never let on he thought that. He'd never have another crime scene go right if word got around he was getting soft.

The wind whistled up the hill and tore into them, rattling the ties on his hood and stinging his eyes. "What have we got?" he asked, raising his voice.

Aucoin was hanging on to his uniform cap, trying to keep it from blowing away. "Dead guy in the Mercedes. Looks like someone jammed a rod down his throat." There was a faint whiff of sickness on his breath.

An ugly corpse, maybe the kid's first, or the prospect of getting reamed by Portland's meanest cop? He'd find out soon enough. "Rod. That a euphemism or are we talking about a piece of metal?"

"Metal, sir."

"There's crime scene tape in a bag on the front seat. Mark it off and then I want you to be the recording officer. You got your notebook?" Aucoin nodded. Burgess raised his flashlight and examined the kid's face. His color was bad. Despite the sour breath, Burgess decided it wasn't distress, that would be green. This was the blue of hypothermia. Kid probably wasn't wearing thermals. Didn't want to look fat in his uniform. Young guys were like that, and this was Aucoin's first winter. He'd learn. "There's a watch cap, a heavy sweater and wind pants on the back seat. Put 'em on."

Aucoin hesitated, pride warring with common sense, then nodded. Burgess watched Aucoin grab the gear, then look around for a dressing room, like he wasn't standing in a snowy street. "Out here or in your car, I don't care, but hurry it up. Like to get things under control before I turn into a Popsicle."

While Aucoin opened his cruiser door and sat on the seat to pull on the pants. Burgess got the crime scene tape, a mallet and a handful of wooden stakes and dumped them in Aucoin's lap. "Ground's probably too hard for stakes. Trees. Poles. Use whatever you can," he said. "How'd you happen to find him?"

The young patrolman looked like he wanted to be anywhere else on earth. "I'd noticed the car earlier, sir. It had been there a while. I thought I'd better check."

"How much earlier?"

"Three hours, sir." The words came out a little bit strangled.

"You waited three hours to check on him?"

"Man's a regular, sir."

Burgess shined his light on the MD plates. "So our victim's a doctor. What's this regular do here?"

"Sex, sir."

He didn't like it that the kid had let so much time pass. That this doctor was allowed to park on a residential street and have sex in his car. "You know of any sex act that takes three hours?"

"No, sir." Kid's teeth were chattering.

No sense wasting time out here on things they could do inside later. Like talk. "You run the plates?"

"Pleasant. Dr. Stephen Pleasant. Radiologist over at the hospital. Pine State Radiology. Car's leased by the business."

The shiver he felt wasn't from the cold. He'd run into Pleasant before. "Live around here? This neighborhood?" In this part of town, the West End, there were some lovely houses.

"Cape Elizabeth."

"Surprise, surprise." His cousin Sam, chief down in Cape Elizabeth, wouldn't take kindly to
his
citizens parking on the streets and getting blow jobs. Burgess didn't either. "Speaking of hospitals, our
friends from down the street are taking a damned long time, aren't they? You get that tape up while I look
at our victim."

"Car's locked, sir," Aucoin said.

"Locked? How'd you get into the car? Break a window?" Aucoin's uncomfortable squirm was all the answer he needed.

"How do you know he's dead?"

"Oh, he's dead all right. Doesn't look like he died happy, either."

"Jesus Christ, Aucoin. You must be damned gifted if you can declare death through a closed car window. How long you been on the force?"