Shattered Shell (51 page)

"What's he in for?"

Felix spoke up. "Major drug smuggling operation in Newburyport, the one that got busted a couple of months back? I'm sure you read about it. Nick was the captain behind the show. Word leaked out and the first major night he had, every cop from Customs to DEA was waiting for him."

She looked at me and then at Felix and said, "You croaked him, didn't you?"

Felix: "Yep."

"You're right, Diane, there was a deal," I said. "He would turn in the arsonist, in exchange for nothing happening to him regarding Kara. So we kept our word. But we never made any promises about his upcoming drug business."

For a brief moment she seemed amused, and then quickly recovered. "I see. So what's the point? There's no way I'm going to put Kara through the trauma of a trial, especially when it involves her brother."

"You know, then."

"Oh, I've known for weeks that she was protecting her brother. She was quite afraid of what I might do to Doug." She slowly nodded. "And with good reason. But Doug is now working on a salmon boat up near the Kodiak in Alaska, and he'll never be back. I've made that quite clear to him." She looked back at the prison walls. "In there, you say. Again, guys, what's the point?"

"Here," Felix said, handing over an envelope. She took it, puzzled, and held it in her hands and said, "What the hell is this?"

"Fake police documents," I said. "Felix had them made up. They say Nick was involved in child rapes, maybe even a kidnapping or killing of a child, You give the word, and Felix will get them into the prison and to the right people. By this weekend, Nick will be gone."

She turned the envelope over and looked at me. "Was this your idea, or Felix's?"

"It was a joint venture," I said.

"I guess the hell it was," she said. "You've kept this quiet all these months, just waiting for Nick to end up behind bars. Just waiting to hand this over to me."

Felix said, "Look at it as a weapon, Diane. All you have to do is tell us to pull the trigger, and we'll take care of it."

She looked again at the envelope, turning it over and over again in her hands, and then looked up at us, smiling, and said:

"Bang."

Then she tore the envelope in half and then in quarters, and after dropping the pieces of paper in the snow, she turned and walked back to her car. I sank back against the fender of Felix's car.

"Well, we tried," I said.

"We certainly did," Felix said. "There's not much more that we can do." He jingled his car keys in his hand. "I would really like to get going, if you don't mind. This place gives me the creeps."

I looked over at the concrete and bricks and the barbed wire, where Nick Seymour was warm and comfortable, and I said, "Then let's get the hell out."

About the middle of April the cold finally snapped, and the chilly winds retreated back up to Canada. The snow and ice around my house melted and for the first time in months I finally saw bare dirt on what was my front lawn. On one particularly warm Friday, I drove into town with the windows down, enjoying the smell and taste of the spring air. I stopped at the post office and, after a quick scan of the day's catch-a cable bill, an electric bill, and a supermarket flyer-I picked up an envelope. There was familiar handwriting on the outside, and inside was a handwritten card: "The Honour Of Your Presence Is Requested At Dinner At 14 Tyler Harbor Meadows," and gave a time of seven p.m. for the next day, Saturday. And underneath, in smaller letters, was: "Regrets Only."

I had no regrets. I decided to go.

I got to Diane's condo promptly at seven, bearing a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers. The parking lot was wet with melting snow and the fresh ocean air tasted fine as I went up to the building, Most of the lights were on, and I could see movement upstairs at Diane's window. I rang the bell and waited, feeling like a kid asking out a young girl for a date for the first time, and then the door opened up and there was Diane. She had on a pale pink sweater and white slacks, and she was quite tanned.

She opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi, yourself. You look great. Where did you go?"

A nice smile. "Kara and I went down to Key West for a week, and we got drunk and made love and hung out on the sands, and had a wonderful decadent time of it. Then we came back and spring is busting out all over. A nice way to schedule the end of winter."

“I’ll have to remember that," I said, still bearing the bottle of wine and flowers. I looked at her and something inside of me just clicked away, and I said, "Damn it, I've missed you."

Her expression changed, just as quick as the snow melting out there, and she nodded and bit her lip and said, "I've missed you, too."

The flowers and the bottle of wine ended up in a half-melted snowbank as we hugged, and I held her tight and a flood of memories just came bursting over me, the times we had shared, the moments where she had entered my life for the better, and the times I had helped her out, and I think we were both a bit blubbery when we were done hugging with each other. As we broke free I kissed her on the cheek and she turned and said, "Fool, kiss me right," and when our lips joined, I swore I felt as if my blood had been switched with helium, I felt so fine.

I laughed and wiped at my eyes and she did the same, and said, "Let's go for a quick walk. Kara's upstairs, finishing up dinner."

We held hands for a moment as we went across the parking lot and then onto the condo's dock that butted out into Tyler Harbor. The wood was warm and we sat on the dock's edge and dangled our feet. The sun had set some time ago, but there was a bright splash of pink out to the west, and we talked and watched the lights of Falconer and the cars going over the Felch Memorial Bridge, and I pointed out a bright dot of light that was a satellite of some sort, maybe the Hubble Space Telescope or the Russian space station.

Diane kept her hand in mine and said, "I've had a lot of time to think things through, and I want to chat with you for a bit, if you're up to it."

"Sure, so long as you don't intend to shove me into the harbor."

She nudged my ribs. "Hardly. It's just that I have a few things to say before dinner, to clear the air, and I want to do that before we go any further."

I squeezed her hand and she said, "I want to take you back for a second, back in January, when Kara was attacked. That was probably the worse month of my life."

"I know."

"No, you don't know. We all have our special pains and hells, and this one belonged to me. I don't mean that you haven't experienced similar things, Lewis, for I know you have, even when you don't talk about it. So that's my point. Kara was hurting and I was in such a rage, knowing I couldn't deal with this on my own. Which is where you enter the picture. But then there's pressures at work, there's the arsons, and then there's little doubts."

"What doubts?"

"Kara's story," she said, looking straight ahead, "I knew there were problems with the story after about a week, but I didn't want to hear that. And when you came to me with those doubts and others, I bit your head off. Like you said, you weren't dealing with Diane the detective. You were dealing with Diane the pissed-off woman, who wanted to know fast and to the point who had hurt her woman. I didn't want to hear doubts. I wanted names and addresses."

"Not a good time."

"Not by a long shot. So that's a pretty awful mix, and you take someone like me, who's both secretive and independent, and then, well, I got funny when I realized I was leaning on you and Felix to help me out. Two men. Now, you've known me for a while and you know I don't fit into any particular stereotype, no matter how many stereotypes are out there. Just because of who I love doesn't necessarily mean I pull a certain lever at the polling booth."

"But still it rankled, having Felix and me work the matter."

"Sure did," she said. "I was certain, if I didn't have the job or other pressures, that I could have done it all by myself, and not depend on, gasp, two men. So you can see where my head was at when the arson case broke and when you wouldn't say anything about the rapist. I swear to God, if you hadn't left the booking room right then and there, I would have arrested you. Hell, I might have even touched you up a bit with a nightstick, I was so angry."

I shuddered a bit, remembering the look on her face. "I'm sure you would have, Diane. I have no doubt."

She turned to me. "You should have told me what you were doing."

"I tried, but you weren't listening."

"You should have tried harder," she said.

I opened my mouth to argue and then I thought about her, being angry and frustrated and steaming, knowing the identity of Kara's rapist was known but was being hidden from her, and I gave up. "You're absolutely right. I should have tried harder."

A kiss to the cheek. "You're so right. Anyhow, I was wrong about something else."

"What's that?"

She sighed. "I should have put away the man-woman thing. I should have trusted you." Her voice broke a bit. "Damn it, you were doing your best, and you weren't doing it as a macho man thing. You were doing it as a friend, and I should have known that."

Well, that deserved a hug, and after a few more minutes of light watching, we went back inside, pausing for a moment for me to retrieve the wine and flowers. Inside, there was the smell of herbs and chicken and other wonderful things being cooked, and Kara greeted me at the head of the stairs. She was as deeply tanned as Diane and gave me a big hug, and Diane had to catch the flowers and wine before they fell to the ground.

Kara kissed my cheek and whispered, "I'm so glad to see you here," and I said, "Me, too," and it was a joy to see her smile and head back to the stove. I sat down at the round, glass-topped table, and we had a long and delightful meal of stir-fried chicken and rice, chased down by many glasses of wine. They hooted and laughed about their times in Key West, and about how one night at a dance club, a couple of male sailors had tried to pick them up, and Kara explained in graphic detail how they showed the two they weren't interested, and I laughed so hard that wine went up my nose.

Dessert was cheesecake and coffee, and Diane made a big show of presenting me with a T-shirt from Key West, one featuring Papa Hemingway, and I held it up and said, "Knowing the way he felt about women, I'm surprised you even let this get into your luggage."

"Don't worry," Diane said with a laugh. "He shared my luggage with a bunch of soiled panties and stockings."

I sniffed the shirt with apparent distaste, which was cause for another round of laughter, and Kara touched my hand and said, "There's one more gift."

"But only after the dishes are done," Diane ordered, and with that, we cleared the table and got to work.

Kara excused herself when we were nearly done and went upstairs. I was wiping down the last dinner plate when among the postcards and pictures that were stuck up on the refrigerator door I saw a newspaper clipping. I read the headline and the dish nearly slipped from my hands. Diane was looking at me, her face not betraying a thing as I reached over and picked up the clipping. It was from a
Boston Globe
of last week, and the item was quite short. The headline said, CONVICTED DRUG DEALER MURDERED AT MCI-CONCORD. The story said, "Prison officials are investigating the stabbing death of Nicholas Seymour, 29, of Newburyport, who was serving a 10- year sentence at MCI-Concord for drug smuggling. Officials said Seymour was found dead in his cell yesterday morning, having suffered from multiple stab wounds. There are no suspects in the case, and prison spokesman Mike O'Keefe said that while the case remains open, the prison is not hopeful that much progress will be made. 'Usually these type of killings occur to settle a grudge or a dispute: O'Keefe said."

I carefully put the clipping back on the refrigerator. Diane was wiping down the counter and still looking at me. I said, "Pretty convenient, this happening while you were out of the state."

"Yeah, funny how that happens," she said. "Prison's a violent place. There's no telling what might go on there at night. A word here, a word there."

"I get the feeling you might just know what happens there at night."

She folded up the towel neatly and placed it to the side of the sink. "Lewis, I'm a police officer, sworn to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the state of New Hampshire. What you're suggesting is that I was involved in a capital crime."

I looked at the clipping and then I looked at her. "No, what I'm saying is that I believe you settled this, just the way you wanted."

Diane walked over to me and then gently touched my cheek for a moment. "I have friends in other places, you know. Some women who share a common lifestyle, some who work in dangerous places, like the prison system. I wasn't going to allow Nick to leave prison. Not for a moment. And I wasn't going to let him go unpunished, and I wasn't going to have Kara hurt, ever again. And I was going to take care of it. By myself. So. What do you have to say about that?"

I stared at her calm expression, and I said, "Good for you." She grinned, and then Kara walked in, carrying a small brown box, and said, "Jesus, a couple more seconds, and I bet you I was going to find you on the table."