Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (30 page)

"Spending time with you is always such fun, Terry."

"Isn't it. Just a merry old detective, me. It's all those years studying at your knee. And just think, if we hadn't made such savvy career moves, we could be working some dull nine-to-five. We could push paper. Push other cops around. Line up neatly sharpened pencils."

"Golly," Burgess said. "Imagine not having to grid-search a junk-filled parking lot in the rain, followed by a cheery chat with a realtor so slimy he could be entered in a greased pig contest, then hearing a sordid tale of innocence abused and now diving into some lowlife's trash. It makes me proud that I can do this for the poor, frightened public."

"And we both know how much they appreciate it. I lie in bed nights, filled with empathy and sympathy for all those worried citizens who're anxious and sorry over the death of a homeless guy."

"He wasn't homeless."

"They don't know that. The paper doesn't know that. Even the other homeless think he was homeless. Anyway, what does it matter? All the hours we spend doing this, John Q. Citizen doesn't give a tinker's damn." Kyle crossed the room and jerked open the refrigerator, sending the reek of spoiled food into the room.

"Yeah. Appreciation. It sure makes the job worth doing." Burgess said. "All those smiles, and waves, and being urged to 'have a good day.' But mostly it's all those donuts they leave out at reception."

Kyle peered over the refrigerator door. "They leave donuts at reception?"

"I've heard they do. Fat Wayne gets them. He's got a hell of a good donut detector."

Fat Wayne Bascomb, perhaps the city's most incompetent police, sat down in evidence control and ate all day, his career security protected by influential relatives who wanted him someplace where he couldn't do any harm and a police department that agreed. No one on the street wanted Fat Wayne watching their back. Burgess had been jonesing to beat on Fat Wayne since the man had messed with some evidence in an important case, and Fat Wayne knew it. Lately, the guy had done a good job of staying out of his way.

Burgess pulled on gloves and went to work. After the ninth used condom wrapper, he wondered about the type of girl Joey attracted. Even a woman out for a good time and a casual hookup must have some standards. Why sleep with a guy whose floor was littered with the relics of his prior sexual activity? Too lazy, horny, or drunk to care, he supposed.

Maybe the girl in the white shoes had been different. Maybe she'd come down here thinking Joey was a nice guy to spend some time with. God knew the kid could be charming when he wanted. Then she'd gotten here and seen what he was really like: a slacker who lived like a filthy pig. Maybe she'd said something and his ugliness had come out. Maybe she'd realized her mistake and said she was leaving when he'd had other plans.

In the corner of the berth, snagged in a tangle of blankets, he found the surveyor's drawings. For all his general indifference, Joey had been interested enough to take them out of the package, and when Burgess unrolled them, it was clear Joey had looked at them. Kid had even spilled food on them. Wouldn't Hazen love that? Burgess carried them out and put them on the table with the things Kyle had culled, then went back and finished the room. The rumpled sheets were dirty and semen stained, with a couple pairs of grimy boxers mixed in. Other than another saucer of roaches and small bag of marijuana, he found nothing else of interest.

He was ready to move on, but some instinct made him hesitate. He pulled the blankets and sheets off, tossed them in the corner, then flipped the mattress over. He found a cut in the cover toward the center, patched with a strip of duct tape. After changing his latex gloves for leather search gloves, he carefully loosened the tape and slipped his fingers in, feeling cautiously around until he hit something plastic and slippery. He pulled it out and held it up to the light. A couple hundred small green pills with an alligator logo he didn't recognize.

"Hey, Ter," he called. "Found something." He held the bag out. "Recognize these?"

"Might be Ecstasy," Kyle said. "Drug guys said they'd been seeing some green pills lately." He smiled. "That's enough for a warrant. And to revoke his probation."

"Now all we've gotta do is find him." Burgess looked around the small, messy cabin. "There might be more," he said. "We'd better get someone to sit on this boat until we can get a warrant and get the drug guys in. Better safe than sorry."

It might have been the detective's motto. No sense in working as hard as they did on a case and then losing everything when someone challenged their search. It created a constant tension between the need to work fast and move a case along, and taking the time to cross the t's and dot the i's to preserve things for the future.

"I'll see if Stan's back," Kyle said. "Be nice to move fast on this one before there's an unfortunate accident, like the boat sinking or a fire of mysterious origin." He returned to the main cabin and Burgess heard him on the phone.

A minute later, as Burgess returned the drugs to the mattress and restuck the duct tape, Kyle stuck his head in. "Stan's on it, and patrol is sending someone down. Ready for the real garbage?" He held a cluster of green bags. "I left some for you."

"I like that about you," Burgess said. "How you're always willing to share."

"Yeah. Misery loves company or something like that. Was this your dream, back in high school, when you were the hotshot football player? To one day be sorting through someone's trash in search of clues?"

"I don't remember having dreams back then," Burgess said. He'd worried about his mother, their precarious financial situation, his father's explosive violence, his sisters' safety. There hadn't been any space for thinking about a future. Life was about getting through the days.

What had he dreamed about? "Nookie, or actually, breasts," he said. "That's about all I thought about back then." He'd been a pig like all teenage boys are pigs. Overrun by hormones and baffled by his body. He'd marveled at what was happening to the young women around him. Puzzled at how it all worked. How big guys like him got together with women, when they seemed so small and breakable. But he'd never been anything like Joey. Joey seemed to think breaking them was part of his job.

"Until Sister Mary Peter whacked you with her ruler," Kyle said.

Burgess looked down at his hands. "You only have to say 'Mary Peter' and they tingle."

"I used to think she was about nine feet tall, you know?" Kyle said. "Saw her on the street a couple months ago and she's just a little bitty thing. She gave me the same old up and down, like she was lasering me for contraband, then said, 'Well, Terrence, I'm pleased to hear you've become such a success in the police department.' Other than for whacking, I didn't think she knew my name."

Kyle grinned, a thin-lipped twitch that came and went so fast you were never sure you'd seen it. "You can be sure my hands were tingling." Burgess followed with more trash as Kyle dropped his bags on the deck. "I think she's the only person who has ever called me Terrence."

It was a nasty job. The public has no idea how many such nasty jobs it asks its police to do. Year in, year out, cops are up to their elbows in society's messes. Sometimes literally. They don't complain. Occasionally, though, they might actually like that box of donuts, or homemade brownies, something to acknowledge the work they did. The smiles and waves they rarely got. After 9/11 they got them for a while, but when you wear the uniform, it's short attention span theater. People quickly resumed their sour 'you've ruined my day' or 'here come the po po' looks.

The rain had moved on. They had warming October sun on their backs as they worked, and noisy gulls dropping in to see if there was anything in Joey's trash for them. He wondered if Nick Goodall had visited the boat at all. It was an expensive item to leave in Joey's indifferent hands, at the mercy of so much carelessness. Maybe Claire was paying him rent?

Most of the trash was really garbage. Bags of sticky, smelly, stomach-turning stuff, some of which had begun to produce maggots. Burgess hated maggots. They made his skin crawl and his stomach heave. At a crime scene, at or around a body, they might be clues to timing and circumstances and were carefully collected. Here they were just ugly little wriggling white things that fed on carrion. He closed the bag, stomach flipping, and stepped away, gulping down some fresh salt air before opening another.

If his trash was any indication, Joey Libby had no life aside from eating, drinking, and sex. Some might say that was the ideal life, but most people were more connected to the world. They got mail. They got bills. They scribbled grocery lists and notes to themselves, wrote on the backs of envelopes, on bar napkins or coasters. They threw away charge slips that made it possible to track their movements, message slips with names and numbers that could be used for follow-up, discarded worn-out socks and clothes, prescription bottles, unwanted business cards. Maybe Joey left all that stuff at his mother's.

In the next bag he found a torn-up envelope with a piece of a logo that looked like the one he'd found in Kevin Dugan's wastebasket. A little deeper down, he found a napkin with a girl's name and number. He wrote them in his notebook and added the napkin to the pile to be saved. Kyle found one of Dr. Lyndeman's appointment cards with Reggie's name on it. There was a torn black envelope with some of Star Goodall's silver ink, and a crumpled, soggy sheet of black paper that would have to be flattened and dried before they had any chance of reading it.

That was the lot.

Like good citizens, they carried the trash to the dumpster, then returned to the boat to wash their hands. There were no paper towels and Joey's few towels were too filthy to use.

"Okay," Kyle said, running his hands down the sides of his pants to dry them. "What now, fearless leader?"

Burgess rolled his eyes. "We could take this back to 109, look it over, and log it in. We could have that chat with Nick Goodall. Or we could go see a girl about her date with a rat."

"Girl," Kyle said without hesitation. "Rat."

Chapter 23

He drove, using Tolliver's directions, with Kyle following. The house was in a nice part of town and it was a nice house. A new house on a big lot with expensive landscaping and a sparkling white fence and healthy shrubs for privacy. There was a Lincoln SUV in the driveway. When he rang the bell, a real dog barked, and when a woman answered, the dog was right behind her.

Her "yes" was reserved and suspicious. People who lived in houses like this didn't get many Jehovah's Witnesses or hopeful peddlers on their doorsteps. They were wary of those who might be after their money or threatening their security and didn't like the sanctity of the home disturbed by uninvited visitors. Burgess was aware that his morning in the wet parking lot and getting up close and personal with Joey's garbage probably hadn't done much for his appearance, but at the best of times, he lacked sartorial splendor.

He showed his badge. "Detective Sergeant Joe Burgess, Portland police, ma'am, and this is Detective Kyle."

Surprise and concern flickered in her eyes. Otherwise, her face remained reserved and noncommittal. She was his age, he thought, though a lot less hard used and, even on an afternoon at home, was dressed with care and attention. Sage green slacks, a lighter green sweater, and a deeper green fleece vest. Green suede flats. Understated jewelry. Neat, short, ash-blond hair. Not a costume for cleaning the toilets or vacuuming rugs. Her hair and skin had the slightly dry look women got when they worked so hard to be thin they lacked basic nutrients. The taut and dusty look of so many Yankee matrons. She had the slightly overlong teeth, too. If you subscribed to the starving rat theory of survival, this woman and her kind would live forever, though always slightly crabby from hunger.

After she'd studied his badge and their faces, she said, "Lois Mercer," in a flat, careful voice. "What is this about?"

"We're looking for your daughter, ma'am. Amanda Mercer?" Burgess said. That was the name from the napkin.

Was that relief he was reading as the woman's head shifted slightly toward the dark house behind her? Then she folded her arms across her chest. "Mandy's not here."

"Ma'am, if you could tell us when—"

Footsteps thudded. A girl's voice called, "Come, Standish. Come. Time for a walk." The dog turned and trotted away. They all heard the sound of a leash snapping onto a collar and then the girl Tolliver had described appeared behind her mother. "Mom, I'm taking—" She stopped when she saw them on the step.