The Angel of Knowlton Park (26 page)

"A little. The boy said he saw a woman drop something in that can, girl said she saw someone drop some trash but can't say if it was male or female. She was talking to some boy and didn't really notice. Can't—or won't—give us the boy's name. They're two scared kids, already had the crap kicked out of 'em by life. Girl didn't want to talk, I didn't want to push it. Thought I'd see if Dwyer could get somewhere."

"Good thought. She was looking for you a while ago."

"I'll see if she's still here." He got to the point. "Wink says the meth's disappeared. I don't know if this is Bascomb trying to screw me, someone else trying to screw me, or general incompetence that has nothing to do with me. But it's critical evidence. That meth's our ticket to search the family house; it's our lever into a whole branch of inquiry—was the boy killed because of a dispute over drugs?"

Melia sighed, a cop too long to be surprised by things. "I've got your report on your visit to the boy's house? Your search of his room?"

"And my signed copy of the inventory, including the meth. Plus you all saw it yesterday afternoon, before I put it in the locker."

"Who was on duty when you put the stuff into evidence?"

"Bascomb."

"And who was on duty when Wink went to retrieve it and log it in?"

"You'll have to ask him." He wanted to drop this in Melia's lap and get back to the important things.

Melia gave him a probing look. "You sound sullen. That's not like you."

"I'm just so fucking mad. We don't need this right now."

"Like we needed the murder?"

He hadn't come in here to play tennis; he'd come to offload the one piece of administrative bullshit that could get kicked up the food chain. If Melia was just gonna give him a hard time, he could go upstairs and get that from Cote. He headed for the door.

"Sit down," Melia said. "What is this? Suddenly you're a Prima Donna?"

"I've got a dead kid waiting on me," Burgess said.

"We've
got a dead kid waiting on
us,"
Melia corrected. "This isn't a western and you aren't the Lone Ranger, okay? I need you to settle down and work this thing without drama. Kyle's hanging on by his fingertips, and Wild Man Perry's ready to beat a confession out of somebody. You control this thing and keep your guys on task or I'll bring in another team."

"Do that," Burgess said, "Then I can put that canoe back on my car and go fishing."

"Then you can sit at your desk and write nice little memos for me and Captain Cote."

Burgess understood. Case like this put everyone's balls in a vise. Sent reverberations all the way down the food chain. Melia
wanted
to solve this case because it was a kid; he
needed
to solve it to protect his ass. "My guys are tired."

Melia gave him a stony look. "Everyone's tired. When did that ever stop you?"

"Stopping? Who said I was stopping? All I'm saying is maybe you could help out here. You find the meth. We'll find the killer."

"Go see Cote."

"Soon as I find Andrea."

"Before."

Burgess shambled out. For years, his doctor had been after him to lose weight, take some of the burden off his knee, screwed up since high school football. Now he'd finally lost weight and he felt worse than ever, screwed up by Timmy's mother, the great sow. And it wasn't even like she cared. He dialed the number on Andrea Dwyer's note. "It's Burgess," he grunted. "You got something for me?"

"Coming from you," she laughed, "I know that's not a pass. You in the building? I'll be right up."

Today she was in uniform. Unlike Officer Beck's, Andrea's uniform didn't have a unisex effect. She looked distinctly female and distinctly professional and neat enough to have stepped out of a recruiting poster. She just looked too goddamn good. For a moment he resented it.

"It's Sunday," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, I imagine," she said, puzzled by his tone. "Trying to keep kids safe."

"What have you got?"

"Kid over at the community center," she said, "comes edging up to me last night, says can he tell me something. What he wants to tell me... this kid is fourteen, got a little brother who's ten... is about a month ago his brother's in the park hanging out and this man comes up to him, wants to know if he likes pizza, invited the kid to his house..."

"You talk to the younger brother?"

"Yeah. Kid's name is Lonnie Mitchell. He doesn't know the man's name, but he could identify him if he saw him again. From Lonnie's description, it sounds like the guy who took Timmy Watts home. Osborne."

"He go to the man's house?"

She looked sorry, sorrow for the kid, he figured, then said, "Yeah."

"Anything happen?" She nodded. "Anybody call the cops?"

"What do you think? Kids I deal with don't have parents in any meaningful sense of the word." She sounded unusually bitter. "A million times, I find myself thinking, 'How could anyone let their kid' and then I recall who's doing the parenting. Or not doing it. There's no 'let' involved. Half the kids in this city are raising themselves. Anyway, Osborne told Lonnie if he said anything, his family would get hurt. So he wasn't going to say anything. Only I guess he sort of knew your victim."

"Lonnie say whether the guy took pictures?"

"He took pictures."

"Great job, Andrea. It's just what we needed." It was ugly but now he could do an affidavit, get a warrant, toss Osborne's house. He looked at the stack of papers on the desk. "I got a report on this?"

She opened the folder she was carrying, pulled out some sheets, and laid them on top of the others. "You do now."

"Something else I could use your help with." He told her about Nina Mallett, the boy she'd been talking to, her reluctance to identify him. Shared the home situation and Nina's background. "I was hoping you'd talk to her. Maybe she'll tell you stuff she wouldn't tell me." He gave her the address.

"It's worth a shot." She didn't tease him or chide him or remind him that he was supposed to be the best. She just nodded, solemn. "God... kids these days. They go through so much. I hope I can help."

She turned away, giving him a nice look at her backside—he'd forgiven her her youth and beauty by now, since she was also such a good cop—then she turned back. "I know I don't have to tell you. Bring his computer back here for Rocky to play with. Rocky can coax porn from a stone."

He thought she had that right. The intricacies of computer forensics completely escaped him, but Rocky would salivate at the chance, if not the way she'd put it. "I'm not sure he'd be pleased to hear you say that."

She dropped one eye in a lewd wink. "He loves to hear me say that."

He went back to Melia's office, set her report on the desk. "Now can you get me a warrant to search Osborne's place?"

Melia scanned the report. "Your gut tell you this is the guy?"

Burgess spread one hand across his stomach, used the other to cup his ear. "My gut's not telling me anything, Vince. Scares the hell outa me. But whether he's our guy or not, this is one place to start. We've got a lot of ties between Osborne and the kid. Whether he killed Timmy Watts or not, he's dirty. Make it broad. We're going in to follow up on this, looking for pornography, evidence of sexual abuse of a minor. If there's anything else, we'll find it."

"How do you want to play it?"

"Assuming he's home, I'll take Kyle with me and reinterview Osborne. You get the warrant, let me know as soon as it's ready, and we move right into tossing the place. Give me the house, the garage, the car. Give me his goddamned trash cans. Computer equipment. Photographic equipment. Dwyer can give you an affidavit."

"You see Cote yet?" Burgess shook his head. "This is my ass, too, Joe."

"I'm on my way."

He stopped to give Kyle a head's up about Osborne. Kyle gave literal meaning to the expression, 'death warmed over.' He ought to send Kyle home, but Kyle was as stubborn as he was, and Burgess knew how he'd react if someone tried to send him home. Besides, Kyle here he could keep an eye on. Kyle at home was one more thing to worry about.

He took some of those deep, calming breaths the shrink had taught him and went to see Cote.

Chapter 20

His tete-a-tete with Cote went too smoothly. Cote had something up his sleeve that kept him from the usual nagging and gnawing. If Burgess had to guess, he'd bet on the missing meth. Looking at the man's plump, self-satisfied face, Burgess vowed he wasn't going to let Cote get to him. If Cote wanted him off his stride so he'd screw up, Burgess wasn't giving him that. The small-minded asshole might have lost sight of the big picture, but Burgess hadn't. This wasn't about them; it was about a murdered boy.

Before he left 109, he paid a visit to another small-minded asshole, Bascomb, just to remind him that Burgess wasn't someone to screw around with. No sense having a reputation as the meanest cop in Portland and not using it when circumstances demanded.

Melia wanted a couple hours for the warrant, given the challenge of finding a judge on a summer Sunday, but he had some news. "Human Services finally called back. Twenty-four hour turn around. Not bad for an emergency, huh?"

"They got the file for us?"

"Not exactly. They can't copy it until someone higher up has approved it. But we can see it if we go to their offices." Melia checked his watch. "Guy who was Timmy's case worker will be there in fifteen minutes, ready to be a good little doobie and show you anything you want. But nothing can leave the office."

"That's bullshit."

"That's bureaucracy. That's interdepartmental cooperation. That's life."

"I thought his caseworker was a woman. That's what Delinsky said."

Melia only held out a fluttering pink message slip. His normally meticulous office looked like a bale of paper had exploded. "You going or shall I send someone else?" Burgess snatched the paper. "You saw Cote," Melia said, "And?"

"He seemed way too pleased about something. I don't see that we have much to be pleased about. Do you?" Melia shook his head.

Burgess grabbed Kyle from a desk as littered as Melia's. "Take a ride with me?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

"Seen Stan?"

"When he went out the door, he said something about K-Mart."

Wayne Bascomb, that repulsive toad, squatted in a chair reading a comic book. The only time he left the chair was to search for donuts. Anyone in the city lost a donut, they could have used the man like a bloodhound. Bascomb could have found a donut in a sewer. Even as a new recruit, when he wasn't so heavy and hadn't yet proved himself intractably stupid, Bascomb had been pudgy and phlegmatic. Whoever hired him might have mistaken inertia for calm and silence for sagacity, but his employment application hadn't been harmed by being the city manager's nephew. The wonder was how he'd gotten through the academy.

Political connections had kept him on the force despite a series of misadventures over the years that had become legend. Twice, as a patrol officer, he'd lost his gun to the bad guys. Once they'd taken his pants and used his handcuffs to fasten him to a light pole on Cumberland Avenue, one of the city's main drags. The second time, they'd used his gun to rob a convenience store. Any other cop would have slunk off in disgrace and shot himself in the nearest stand of trees. Bascomb, in perhaps the one smart move of his career, figured they wanted him off the street and asked for this job.

Burgess stood in the doorway of the evidence area, his hand resting lightly on the butt of his gun, smiling at Bascomb. "I hear there was an evidence mix-up last night."

Bascomb scratched his nose. "Don't know what you mean." He lowered his eyes to the comic.

"Last night," Burgess reminded him. "I brought in a box of stuff from that homicide. The Watts boy? Stuff Devlin was too busy to log in. You remember that?" Bascomb looked blank. "You've got a record of it, haven't you, Wayne?"

Bascomb scratched his nose again, then shuffled through some papers, trying for attitude. "Yeah. I've got a record."

"Devlin came down for it, and when he got it, something was missing. How do you account for that?"