Authors: Steven Axelrod
Cop Shop Morning
It was a quiet autumn on Nantucket. The show was closed for the season and the audience had gone home. You could park downtown and the long lines of cars piling up at every stop sign had vanished like the beer cans on the beaches. The parties were finished for the winter along with the traffic jams. The Christmas trees were lined up along Main Street, and the Stroll had been a surprising success. The Chamber of Commerce was happy. House sales were up. Late autumn had always been the slow time on the island, with nothing on the docket but DUIs, domestic interventions, and disturbing the peace calls. We gave out warnings and calmed people down. The jail cells were empty and the court was taking Fridays off. The long weekends felt good. We were all grateful for the yearly respite. None of us expected it to end so soon.
Then one bright cold Monday in December, I found a critical piece of evidence in a real crime, which turned out to be one part of a much bigger investigation. All of a sudden, I was a cop again and I had to admit it felt good.
I spent the first part of the morning reviewing the night watch log. A loud party, some black ice fender-benders. The highlight was a carpenter pulled over for erratic driving twenty miles over the posted limit on the Milestone Road in an uninspected, unregistered F-150. He had an open bottle of peppermint schnapps wedged between his thighs, and a baggie full of marijuana in the glove compartment next to an illegal gun. He fled when Rory Burke hit the flashers and then took a swing at him when the kid tried to give him the Breathalyzer. Apparently the guy hadn't registered his car because he had twenty-five hundred dollars' worth of outstanding parking tickets. His license had been suspended for multiple DUIs.
I shook my head, amused in spite of myself. The only way this could be worse was if the guy had a dead body in the truck bed. And it turned out he did, in a way: a doe, shot out of season, bleeding out on a plastic tarp.
I shoved the log aside. I had noticed the guy in one of the holding cells this morning. Joe something; he'd been involved in a bar fight a few weeks before. The stale alcohol billowed off him like the reek of fertilizer from a ploughed field. I felt bad; the guy was in serious trouble. But there was nothing anyone could do to help. I shrugged. Maybe hitting rock bottom would do the trick, and this arrest would certainly drop him a little closer. I hadn't stopped smoking until I found myself coughing blood into a Kleenex.
The intercom buzzed. I picked it up.
“You got time to run out to 'Sconset? Donnelly and Boyce are out at theâhold on a secondâthe Lattimer house? On Main Street, I have the address. There was a burglary, no one knows when. The owners just showed up for the month like they always do and the stuff was gone. The guys didn't find much. The Lattimers are old Nantucket and they're not happy right now. They want to talk to you, nobody else.”
I blew out a breath. What the hellâI had nothing else to do. “I'll swing by. Have Donnelly and Boyce stay there.”
The Lattimer house was set back from the road behind a tall hedge, looming bulky and forbidding through the dense swirl of snow. It had been a whaling captain's mansion a hundred and fifty years ago. Four generations of crusty, ill-tempered Yankees had stubbornly refused to make the usual improvements. The place hadn't even been painted in more than a decade. There were no shiny new appliances, no ostentatious additions with white bookshelves full of framed family photographs and Steuben glass. The cramped rooms and dark narrow corridors remained intact. No walls had been knocked down. No steel I-beams had been installed to prevent the old pile from sagging on its foundation. It had been sagging since before the Civil War. It was a sharp uphill walk from the pantry to the stove in the kitchen.
I met Kyle Donnelly at the front door and followed him through the house, edging past the dark shelves full of bestsellers from the sixties (Bel Kaufman, Allen Drury, Louis Auchincloss) and dusty volumes of Nantucket history. Nicotine stained Cahoon mermaids and Jacobson ferry paintings crowded the lumpy plaster walls.
The Lattimers stood at the top of the kitchen, sipping tea and talking to Charlie Boyce. David Lattimer stood six-foot-three, with gangly disjointed arms and big hands, his posture bent slightly after a lifetime of stooping under doorway lintels. His eyes were deep set under bushy gray brows and his wide mouth curved up naturally as if he were perpetually amused by the follies of the people around him. He wore brown wide wale corduroy slacks and a J. Press Shetland pullover sweater. Philippa was almost as tallâsix-foot-one maybe. She wore old blue jeans and a heather cable knit cardigan; no makeup, no jewelry. Thick gray hair fell to the line of her jaw, which was softening slightly without plastic surgery. She must have been a world-class beauty when she was young. Even in her late sixties she was striking. She and her husband were like emissaries from a race of giants. I felt small and poverty-stricken next to them, as if they were volunteering at a soup kitchen, ladling out my Christmas dinner.
“Thank you so much for coming,” said Philippa. “Would you like some tea?”
“No thank you. If you could show me the room where the theft took place?”
David cleared his throat. “I was just telling this young man here, Detective Boyce? That these thieves were idiots. They took a Centennial Windsor chair. Those were made a century after the period. They're just Colonial Revival pieces, really. And they left a comb-back Windsor in the study with the original paint that's easily a hundred times more valuable. They take an Empire dresserâ¦the shiny mahogany must have impressed them. And they leave a Queen Anne chest. Not that I'm complaining. It's just typical of the new people here.”
“David⦔ Philippa began.
“No, I mean it, Darling. Even the thieves are ignorant and sloppy. And demanding. I'm sure they'll be very annoyed with us for not labeling the more valuable pieces! I'm so tired of these people and their demands. Everyone has to have a fancy truck and a little tract house. It's appalling. Anyone who can pick up a hammer thinks they deserve a home on Nantucket. And if they have to steal to pay for it, fine!”
“Do you know we never even locked our house,” Philippa said, getting into the spirit of the conversation. “For years. All while the children were growing up. We never even had a key. I could leave my basket on the car seat downtown without a second thought. I'd never do that now.”
David laughed. “You give them too much credit. We have Reyes lightship baskets all over this house. I'm sure they looked right at them and had absolutely no idea what they were seeing.”
“If I could just take a look around,” I began again.
“Of course,” Philippa said. “I'm so sorry. Of course you're busy. Things were taken from the dining room and from David's study. Here, I'll show you.”
Donnelly and Boyce had already been over the place. They were competent detectives. I didn't expect to find anything useful. I was there more for public relations than police work. I followed Philippa into David's study. David himself was just behind us. “I remember Chief McGrady,” he was saying. “It was different Nantucket in those days. Bunny ran his Jeepster into a lighting pole right on Main Street one night, drunk as a hoot owl. He tottered down to the station to report it. McGrady was working late. He said, “You're a Lattimer, aren't you? Just go on home and let me take care of this.” That was how things were in the old days. Chief McGrady would no more have arrested a Lattimer than sprouted wings and flown away.”
“An extraordinary man,” Philippa said.
“Big shoes to fill,” I agreed.
They all hovered in the doorway for a moment.
“Well, we'll let you get to it,” David said.
I walked into the cramped, book-lined study and turned on the desk light. There were two neat stacks of papers and an old IBM Selectric typewriter. A jar of pencils that needed sharpening, an ashtray that needed cleaning.
“Nothing to see, Chief,” Donnelly said. “We dusted. No prints. So they were smart enough to wear gloves, at least. There's no sign of a break-in. Mr. Lattimer says they've been locking the place up for the last few years, but who knows? They don't have an alarm system. No neighbors around except at Thanksgiving. Could have happened any time since Labor Day.”
Something caught my eye. I kneeled down next to desk. It was a cigarette butt, burned almost down to the filter. Two small amber cones were visible: the top of some insignia printed on the paper. I recognized it instantly: a Camel. I picked it up with a pair of tweezers from my coat pocket and held it up to the two detectives. They weren't impressed.
“We saw it, Chief,” Boyce said.
“Mr. Lattimer smokes Camels,” Donnelly added.
“But he doesn't usually leave them on the floor. Look at the ashtray on his desk.”
There were two butts stumped out in the square cut-crystal.
“So he dropped one and forgot about it. He's old. Lucky the house didn't burn down.”
I nodded. “Sure. Makes sense. But look at the cigarette. Check it out.” I extended the tweezers under the desk lamp. The two detectives made a show of looking it over.
“Nothing?”
“Not that I can see,” said Donnelly.
Boyce just shrugged.
I smiled. “I have the advantage here. This used to be my brand. See the little gold band just above the filter? Camel Lights.”
“So?”
“So Lattimer smokes regulars.” I plucked a butt from the ashtray. “See? No gold band. These guys were dumb enough to leave a cigarette butt here. And now we know what brand they smoke.”
“Yeah butâ¦I mean, what do we do with that piece of information, Chief?”
“Remember it.”
I set the cigarette down on the floor again. “Bag this. Finish up with the Lattimers. And get me the paperwork by this afternoon.”
I checked the dining room, but didn't see anything useful. I looked into the kitchen one more time on the way out.
“Mr. Lattimer?”
David and Philippa were sitting at the round table by the window, finishing their tea. David looked up.
“Who's your caretaker out here? I'd like to talk to him.”
“Pat Folger. But he's not posted on guard duty. He saved the pipes from freezing twice last winter. That's what we pay him for.”
“Of course. I'm not blaming him for this. But I'd like to get his thoughts.”
“I'll tell you his thoughts! We should get electronic locks and surveillance cameras and alarm systems tied into the state police headquarters. We should barricade ourselves in here and live like fugitives! Those are his thoughts. But I won't do it. That's not the Nantucket I love. If it comes to that I'll sell this house and move away and never look back. I'll live in the city and enjoy my memories.”
I had nothing to add. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Lattimer, Mrs. Lattimer. I'll keep you informed on the progress of the investigation.”
I took the long Polpis Road loop back to town, through 'Sconset and then out past Sankaty Light, through the old golf course and then skirting Sesacecha Pond, which was now open to the ocean again. It was the tourists' route, with the cranberry bogs and the moors opening up on my left and the glimpses of Polpis Harbor past the big houses on the right. It took longer than Milestone Road and the sharp curves meant you had to pay attention to your driving. But I was in no rush and the big Ford took the turns with easy precision.
I was headed around the rotary when I got the call.
It was one of my best patrol officers, Sam Dixon, on the line. Chief Selectman Dan Taylor's kid, Mason, had barricaded himself inside his room with one of his father's guns, and he was threatening to commit suicide. At least he hadn't done it yet.
The big problem was Dan Taylor himself. That was why Sam called me. Dan had run the Board of Selectmen since long before I arrived on the island and he acted like he was the mayor and Nantucket was Chicago and the year was 1893. Well, with the island caught up in the new Gilded Age, at least that part made sense. In addition to authorizing new stop signs and illegal parking zones, Dan spent most of his time ingratiating himself with people like Preston Lomax. Dan did caretaking for half of them and he was working on the rest. Like most professional suck-ups, Dan turned into an insufferable bully with anyone ranking lower in the social pecking order. That included most of my officers, the other town employees, and his own son. I had always pitied Mason, being raised by that petty tyrant.
But it turned out the suicide standoff had nothing to do with Dan.
Mason Taylor was killing himself over a girl.
It wasn't so strange; I'd researched the phenomenon after a couple of teen suicides the winter I first got to Nantucket. The synapse in the brain that helps us understand our own mortality is still under construction with teenagers. They don't get it that impressing the girl you love with the seriousness of your passion by killing yourself ultimately won't do you much good, since you'll be dead afterward.
The Taylors lived in Nashaquisset, a subdivision off Surfside Road, walking distance from the high school.
On the second floor, Dan was trying to break down Mason's door. I took the stairs two at a time, bounded half the length of the hall and caught Dan's shoulder just as he started another charge. Randy Ray stood by, haplessly looking on, side by side with Sam Dixon, who should have known better. He'd been smart enough to call me, but “call the chief” shouldn't be the default response to a crisis. What if there were two crises going on at once?
I took the Head Selectman off balance and spun him around. He staggered a few steps as he turned to face me.
“Stay out of this, Chief,” he snarled. “This is none of your goddamn business.”
I watched him, waiting for a movement. “Your boy has a loaded firearm in that room, Dan. That makes it my business.”