The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb: A Berger and Mitry Mystery (Berger and Mitry Mysteries) (18 page)

Glynis looked at her searchingly. “And…”

“No one’s talking. Not your mother. Not Buzzy. Not the Paffins. Not the congressman. Not anyone.”

“So what happens next?”

“Quietly and discreetly go out the window and normal procedure takes over. And I don’t just mean the Major Crime Squad. Lance was a naval officer. That means the feds will muscle in. And with the congressman in the middle of this it’ll get huge.”

Glynis considered this, her legal wheels starting to turn. “Maybe I should have a serious conversation with my mother.”

Des’s cell phone vibrated. It was the Deacon. She excused herself, stepped out of the vehicle and said, “What can I do for you, Daddy?”

“You can tell me what the congressman said to you this morning,” he barked at her.

Instantly, she felt her stomach knot up. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Just answer the question, young lady.”

“He said that he intends to announce his retirement from the US Congress later today, effective immediately.” On the Deacon’s chilly silence she said, “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Not two minutes after you left him at the Fairburn Senior Center Congressman Cahoon ditched his staff
and
our escort cruiser and took off by himself in his Chevy Suburban.”

“Took off for where?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me. How was he behaving?”

“He was defiant. Also quite bitter. He hates the idea that Frances Shaver’s name will get dragged through the mud after all of these years. He never got over losing her. Or blaming Lance for it. He’s hoping that if he resigns it’ll take the media spotlight off of our investigation. He also told me he’s sick of all of the partisan bickering in Washington, although I’m not sure I totally bought that.” On the Deacon’s continued chilly silence she added, “I was polite and respectful, if that’s any comfort.”

“It’s not. Desiree, if you hear anything…”

“Not to worry. I’ll Al Green you.”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll call you.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?” he muttered as rang off.

Des was just about to get back inside of her cruiser with Glynis when her cell phone vibrated again. This time the caller was Mitch. She took it. “What have you got for me? And please God make it good.”

He said, “Listen, um, do you know the old Cahoon family cemetery at the top of Johnny Cake?…”

“I do,” she replied, not liking the way his voice sounded. “What about it?”

“Bart Shaver asked me to meet him up here. And I just got here and he’s lying f-face down in the grass. Somebody shot him in the back, Des. He’s dead. Bart’s dead.”

*   *   *

The top of Johnny Cake Hill was the highest spot in the historic district and the site of Dorset’s very first meetinghouse, according to the bronze plaque that had been installed there in 1949 by the historical society to commemorate its three hundredth anniversary. Johnny Cake Hill Road, which was steep and twisting, dead-ended at the oldest existing home in Dorset—the Thomas Cahoon House, a rambling, low-slung white Cape that dated back to 1647 and was the official residence of Congressman Luke Cahoon, who was presently among the missing.

Des saw no black Chevy Suburban in the congressman’s driveway. No cars at all. And no lights were on in the house on this cloudy afternoon that seemed to be growing darker by the minute. The air felt extremely raw.

The house was surrounded by forty or so acres of woods. The Cahoon cemetery, which was officially the property of the town of Dorset, wasn’t visible from the road. Mitch’s old Studey truck was. It was snugged over onto the shoulder about a hundred yards down from the house, right behind a silver Honda Civic. Des noticed several sets of what appeared to be fresh tire prints in the moist earth behind the truck. She pulled onto the shoulder across the road so as not to disturb the tire prints and got out. A dense ten-foot-high thicket of wild blackberry, privet and forsythia shielded the cemetery from passersby. It was unmarked. If you didn’t know it was there then you wouldn’t know it was there. A narrow footpath snaked its way through the thicket. Des walked along the very edge of it to avoid compromising any shoe prints.

After about thirty feet the path arrived at the windswept little family cemetery, which enjoyed an incredible panoramic view of the mouth of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. Also of the seventh fairway of the country club’s golf course, which lay just below it on the other side of an old, lichen-encrusted fieldstone wall. The cemetery was enclosed on all four sides by fieldstone walls. There were maybe a hundred gravestones. Most were of brownstone, which had been quarried plentifully in the area early on. Brownstone isn’t as hard as granite or slate. The hand-carved inscriptions and elaborate images of skulls with wings had suffered serious erosion over the centuries. Many of the names, dates and biblical quotations were hard to make out. Some of the gravestones were rounded nubs no more than eight inches high. These marked the graves of small children and babies.

Bart Shaver lay dead on his stomach amidst the gravestones. Bart’s left leg was straight, his right leg bent at the knee. Bart’s head was turned so that it faced his bent knee. His eyes were open. On his face was a look of extreme disappointment. Des had never seen such a look of disappointment on the face of a dead man, and she’d seen a lot of dead men. And women. And children.

She would have to draw that look on Bart Shaver’s dead face—assuming she ever figured out how to draw again.

He’d been shot three times in the back at very close range by what looked to be a .38. His tan herringbone-tweed blazer showed scorching and gunshot residue at the point of the entry wounds. Either someone had snuck up on Bart from behind or Bart had been talking to his shooter, then turned and started to walk away when the shooter opened fire. Des bent over and felt the exposed skin of his neck above the powder blue crewneck sweater he wore. Still a bit warm. It had happened within the past hour. She could see the bulge of Bart’s wallet in the right rear pocket of his khaki trousers. It hadn’t been a robbery, not that she for one second thought it had been. His cell phone lay in the grass next to his right knee.

Mitch stood a good distance away from Bart intently studying a gravestone, his hands buried in the pockets of his olive green C. C. Filson wool jacket, a manila folder tucked under one arm. He hadn’t acknowledged her arrival. Hadn’t so much as looked at her. Or Bart. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

She phoned it in. A trooper from Troop F in Westbrook would be there soon to provide backup. Within twenty minutes the crime-scene techies and the ME’s death investigator would arrive, followed soon thereafter by officers from the Major Crime Squad. There was no avoiding them now.

She approached Mitch, moving her way slowly toward him.

“Have you ever been up here before?” he asked her, his hollow-eyed gaze never leaving the inscribed gravestone. “Check this out … Titus Cahoon, deceased on the 27th of May, 1719, at the age of seventy. He was born here in 1649. Lived his entire life here two whole generations before the American Revolution, can you imagine? And get a look at Elijah Lay over here.… Elijah was a Revolutionary War hero. Served in the Eighth Company, Sixth Regiment. Died April 4, 1818 at the age eighty-one. Isn’t that incredible?”

“Incredible,” she said patiently. He was inching his way closer to Bart’s body. He’d get there when he was ready to get there.

“And, look, there’s
eight
kids buried here, aged five and younger, who all died within a few months of each other in 1696.” The tiny gravestones were clustered close together and surrounded by a low, spiked wrought-iron fence. “There must have been a smallpox or diphtheria outbreak.” He edged his way still closer to Bart, looking up at her now for the first time. “He’s in half-frog pose.”

“He’s in what?”

“That’s a yoga pose he’s doing. My teacher, Liza, likes to call it roadkill pose. It’s a hip and groin opener. I find it also works on the piriformis muscles in my butt, which are always tight because I sit on them so much. Do you think he’ll be given a proper burial?”

“Bart? Sure, he will.”

“I meant Lance Paffin.”

She studied him as they stood there together in the light drizzle that was starting to fall. “Are you okay, baby?”

“Not really.”

“Want to tell me what happened?”

“I got him killed. That’s what happened. It’s my fault.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I asked him to look into something for me. Actually, I didn’t ask him. He volunteered. He was hoping I’d do him a solid in return.”

“What did you ask him to look into?”

Mitch didn’t answer her.

“Baby, what’s in that folder under your arm?”

Again, he didn’t answer. Just gazed at her with those sad-puppy eyes of his. “What we’re into here, this is
not
a Douglas Sirk movie, you know? There are no violins playing. No pretty people. And the color palette is just way off. The bloodstains on his back don’t even match the color of his sweater.”

“Don’t match the what?”

“I have to go now,” he announced abruptly.

“Mitch, we have to talk about this.”

“Can’t right now. Can’t be here. I only stayed because I didn’t want the poor guy to be all alone.”

Des put her hand on his arm. “Okay, we’ll talk later,” she said gently.

Mitch didn’t hear her. He’d already started toward the fieldstone wall that protected the little cemetery from the golf course. He climbed over it and began his way across the seventh fairway, walking stiffly like a zombie. She would have gone after him except she couldn’t leave the murder scene. Besides, he needed some time alone to process his horror. He’d be okay.

And she had something she needed to do before the others arrived. Des always kept a fresh latex glove in her jacket pocket. Quickly, she put it on, snatched up Bart’s cell phone from the grass and checked his call log. The young journalist had placed two calls in the last hour of his life. One was to Mitch’s home number. He’d called someone else ten minutes after that. She stared at that person’s name and number before setting the phone back down exactly where she’d found it.

She was pocketing the glove when the trooper from the Troop F barracks arrived. She instructed him to cordon off the perimeter a hundred feet down Johnny Cake Hill Road. While he did that she strode up to Congressman Cahoon’s house for a closer look around. The black Suburban wasn’t in his garage. Just an old silver Mercedes 450SL two-seater convertible. She knocked on the front door. No one answered. She peered inside a front window. Saw nothing and no one. Strode around the immaculately manicured grounds to the back of the house and peered in the French doors to the kitchen. Still saw nothing and no one. No lights were on anywhere.

She started back toward the cemetery now, reaching for her cell phone. When he picked up she said, “Daddy, this one’s turned hot. Buzzy Shaver’s young cousin, Bart, has just been shot dead in the Cahoon family cemetery at the top of Johnny Cake Hill. It’s adjacent to the congressman’s home.”

The Deacon was silent for a long moment before he said, “Is the congressman home?”

“Doesn’t appear to be—unless he ditched the Suburban and is hiding in the dark. I can no longer keep it quiet. I’ve called in the Major Crime Squad.”

“As well you should,” he stated stiffly. “Thank you for alerting me. Please call if you have anything else to tell me.”

“I will.”

“Desiree?…” He fell silent again. She could practically feel him struggling for the words. Feelings were not his thing. “I’m sorry about this.”

“Me, too. There’s a big supply of sorry to go around.”

By now the crime-scene technicians were pulling up in their blue-and-white cube vans, followed by the death investigator. Soon after that a two-woman team in dark-colored pantsuits arrived from the Major Crime Squad. The lead investigator was Des’s protégé and friend Yolanda Snipes, an exceptionally fierce half-black, half-Cuban pit bull with breasts who’d fought her way out of Hartford’s Frog Hollow projects to make it all of the way to lieutenant. Her pint-sized young sergeant was Toni Tedone, who was 70 percent big hair and 30 percent hooters. Toni the Tiger was one of the Waterbury Mafia Tedones—the clan of Italian-Americans from the Brass City who pretty much ran the state police. Back before a case blew up in Des’s face, back when it was
she
who was a lieutenant handling homicides, her sergeant had been Toni’s chesty, fathead cousin Rico. Now Rico was on the Drug Task Force and it was little Toni who’d been handed a choice slot on the Major Crime Squad. Toni was a first of, as in the first member of the Waterbury Mafia who was a she.

When Yolie saw Des standing there her scarred face broke into a big smile. “Hey, Miss Thing.”

“Hey back at you. I thought that you girls were busy.”

Yolie let out a laugh. “That’s a US congressman’s house over there, am I right? Guess what? We are suddenly unbusy.”

“How are you, Yolie?”

“Always happy to see you.”

“Me, too,” exclaimed Toni, who surprised the hell out of Des by giving her a great big oofy hug. “You’re looking
fabulous
.”

“Why, thank you,” Des responded, taking notice of the new, size-huge diamond engagement ring Toni was sporting on her left ring finger.

“Who is our victim, Miss Thing?”

“Bart Shaver of
The Gazette
. He was shot three times in the back from very close range by what looks to me like a .38. But what do I know?”

“More than I ever will. Bag and tag the victim’s cell phone, Sergeant. And go have a look-see in his car.”

“Right, Loo. And his keys are…”

“It’ll be unlocked,” Des said. “No one ever locks their cars in Dorset.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. This is the sweet little place where nothing ever happens. Am I look-seeing for anything in particular?”

“He was a reporter,” Des said. “I’d grab his laptop if it’s there. Also any five-by-eight notepads you might find.”

“And canvass the neighbors down the road,” Yolie told her. “Find out if they heard the shots or saw somebody driving away. This is a dead-end road. There can’t be too many cars coming and going.”