The Bright Silver Star (15 page)

Des nosed up alongside of the pickup and got out, her hornrimmed glasses immediately fogging up in the warm, humid air. Des had to wipe them dry with the clean white handkerchief that she kept in her back pocket.

One other vehicle, a scraped-up black Jeep Wrangler, was parked there in the ditch next to the gate.

“It’s just awful,” Kathleen said to her over the steady roar of the falls, her voice cracking. “I’ve
never
seen anything like this. I was making my routine morning swing through the park, you know? I didn’t even know what I was looking at when I first saw him. I swear, I just thought it was a bundle of old clothes.”

“I’m sorry you had to see it,” Des said to her sympathetically. Finding a jumper was definitely pukeworthy.

Des paused to take a closer look at the Jeep. The scrapes were
fresh—loose flecks of black paint came right off on her fingers. A mud-splattered cell phone lay on the wet ground a few feet away on the driver’s side. Before she did anything else Des bagged it and stashed it in her trunk. Then she opened the Jeep’s passenger door and poked around inside. She spotted no suicide note. She did find a car rental agreement stuffed in the glove compartment, made out to Tito Molina. She returned it to the glove compartment and closed the Jeep back up.

“Let’s go have us a look, Kathleen, okay? And if you start to feel the least bit funky, just sing out. We don’t have any heroes in this unit.”

The young ranger smiled at her gratefully and ushered her inside the gate on foot, where there was a parking lot adjoined by picnic grounds. At this spot, they were up above the waterfall. “It’s happened before,” she told Des as they walked. “A pair of lovers jumped off together back in the ’80s. And there was a teenaged boy high on drugs a couple of years ago. I was warned. But I still . . . I wasn’t ready for this.”

“Trust me, no one is,” Des said as they arrived at a guardrail that was posted with a sign:
Let the Water Do the Falling. Stay Behind This Point.

“I think I know where he jumped from. We can take a look before we go down, if you’d like. Just watch your step.”

Des followed her over the guardrail and out onto a bare outcropping of rock, stepping carefully. The granite surface was slick and mossy, and the soles of her brogans were not ideal for rock climbing. An empty pint bottle of peppermint schnapps lay there. She eye-balled it to see if he’d left a suicide note rolled up inside of it. He hadn’t. Beyond that, she kept her distance, not wanting to compromise the scene. From where she stood she saw a few spent matches. No muddy shoeprints on the granite. Not that she expected any. The night’s rain would have washed them away.

“You can see him from here.” said Kathleen, crouching near the edge of the outcropping.

Des inched over beside her and peered over the side of the sheer
granite face. Mostly, what she saw was the swirling white foam of the river as it came crashing down onto the smooth, shiny gray a hundred feet below. But then her eyes did make out a small patch of color—a figure in an orange T-shirt and blue jeans that lay there down on those rocks.

“Okay, Kathleen, I’ve seen enough.”

They retraced their footsteps back to the guardrail and made their way down a narrow footpath to the base of the falls. It was a steep and demanding descent. The path was not only mucky from the rain but was crisscrossed with exposed tree roots. Des wished she had on hiking boots like the ranger did.

Tito Molina had landed faceup on the boulders that were next to river, his eyes wide open. His arms and legs seemed grotesquely shrunken inside of the T-shirt and jeans he had on. He looked like a small boy dressed in a man’s clothing. His famous, chiseled face had crumpled in upon itself, like a high-rise building after the demolition man has imploded it. Blood and brain matter had oozed out onto the rocks from under his shattered head. The back of his skull seemed to have borne the brunt of the impact, which Des found a bit surprising. So did the direction he was facing—his feet were pointing
toward
the outcropping that he’d leapt from. She stood there looking at him for a long moment, feeling that old, familiar uptick of her pulse. She hadn’t felt it for a while. Not handing out traffic tickets to obnoxious tourists.

Briefly, her eyes lingered on the T-shirt Tito was wearing. It was a New York Mets 1986 World Series T-shirt, a shirt that she swore she’d seen Mitch wear. In fact, it was one of his prized possessions. Why on earth would Tito Molina be wearing it?

Now she tilted her head back and gazed up, up toward the top of the cliff, which loomed straight overhead. Rooted there in a fissure in the granite face, perhaps ten feet beneath the rock outcropping where they’d found the schnapps bottle, Des could make out a small, hardy cedar tree clinging for life. Tito’s fall had snapped off one of its limbs. The raw wood stood out like exposed bone against the darkness of the stone. She stared at the tree, transfixed, certain that it
was trying to whisper something crucial to the suffering artist deep inside of her. But whatever it was she couldn’t comprehend it. Didn’t speak the right language. Didn’t even know any of the words. Didn’t know. Didn’t know . . .

“I didn’t move him or anything,” Kathleen said, raising her voice. The roar of the falls was even louder down here. “I couldn’t bring myself to get near him.”

“You did right, Kathleen.”

“I have a tarp in my truck. Should we cover him?”

“We don’t want to go anywhere near him,” said Des. “That’s the medical examiner’s deal. What we do need to do is secure this scene. Are the other entrances to the park open yet?”

“No, I always open this gate first.”

“Well, that’s a help,” she said, knowing full well that once word of this got out the paparazzi would be coming over, around, and through any gate they could find. “I need for you to stand guard over the body while I radio in. No one, but no one, comes near it, okay?”

“I guess so,” she answered, visibly uncomfortable.

“You don’t have to look at him, Kathleen. Just stay here with your back toward him. Anyone gets close, you chase ’em off. I’ll be back with the cavalry just as soon as I can. Can you do that for me?”

The young ranger nodded at her gamely.

“You the man, Kathleen.”

Des hiked back up to her ride and radioed the Troop F Barracks in Westbrook for as many cruisers as they could spare, then the medical examiner’s office for a team of investigators. Based on her own observations, Des also made the decision to reach out to her old unit, the Central District headquarters of the Major Crime Squad in Meriden.

Then it was also up to her to notify the next of kin. As the morning sun broke bright and hot over the trees, she phoned Martine, figuring the news might go down easier if Esme heard it from her mother.

“Martine, we have a situation up here at the Hopyard,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “It’s Tito. We found him at the base of the falls.”

“He’s. . . dead?” Martine’s voice was a frightened whisper.

“He is. Can you inform Esme?”

“Absolutely. We’ll be up there right away.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“She’ll need to see him, Des. She’ll insist. I won’t be able to stop her.”

“I understand. That being the case you might want to bring Chrissie along for the ride.”

“Why would we do that?” Martine asked, her voice turning chilly.

“It’s going to be a total zoo.”

“Yes, you’re absolutely right. I wasn’t even thinking. I’m just so . . .” Martine sighed mournfully. “Why would Tito
do
such a thing? He was so talented and loved. That poor, beautiful boy.”

“Martine, you’d better prepare Esme for something else. . . .”

“What is it, Des?”

“Tito’s not beautiful anymore.”

The first trooper to arrive on the scene established a perimeter by shutting down the narrow Hopyard Road all the way back at Route 82. More cruisers started arriving soon after that. Des directed them to the other park entrances, and sent a trooper down the path on foot to take over for Kathleen. A medical examiner’s van pulled up next and a pair of brisk, efficient investigators in blue jumpsuits hopped out. Des directed them to the body. Then the crime scene technicians started arriving in their cube vans, followed closely by a slicktop with two Major Crime Squad investigators in it.

The investigator behind the wheel was a woman of color. A short, muscle-bound man was riding shotgun. Des knew this man only too well—Rico “Soave” Tedone had been her sergeant back when she was a lieutenant on Major Crimes. Soave was one of the Brass City boys, kid brother of a capo in the state police’s so-called Waterbury mafia. When they’d knifed her, it was Soave who’d wielded the blade. At the time, she had hated him for it. Not that he was a bad person, just immature, a work in progress, a
man.
Now that Soave was a lieutenant and Des was Dorset’s resident trooper, their relationship had thawed considerably, so much so that when he’d finally
gotten around to marrying his high school sweetheart, Tawny, Des had been invited and actually gone to the wedding.

“Yo, Des!” he called to her warmly as he climbed out of the slick-top, flexing his body-builder’s muscles inside of his shiny black suit. He always wore black. Thought it made him look classy. In truth, it made him look like a chauffeur.

“How are you, Rico?”

“Never better,” he said, grinning at her.

Marriage did seem to agree with him. He looked cheerful and relaxed. Possibly even a bit jowly. And he’d finally shaved off his dead caterpillar of a mustache, Des was happy to note, although he had not lost his nervous habit of smoothing it with his thumb and forefinger. Except now all he was smoothing was bare skin.

“What have you got for us, Des?”

“Got you one dead movie actor.”

“He jumped?”

“Very good question, wow man. Happily, I don’t have to answer that. You do.”

Soave’s partner started toward them now, dressed in a sleeveless lime green knit top, tan slacks, and chunky boots that gave her a couple of inches on Soave. She was a good five feet nine and built like a rottweiler with jugs. Huge jugs.

“Now, here’s a meeting I’ve been looking forward to,” Soave said eagerly. “Des Mitry, give it up for my new partner, Yolie Snipes.”

Des had heard about Yolie Snipes on the grapevine. The boys called her Boom Boom because of what she had going on inside of her shirt. She was half-Cuban, half-black, and all player—young, tough and street smart.

“God, this is just such a thrill for me,” Yolie exulted as she pumped Des’s hand. She wore her nails short and painted them purple. Her grip was like iron. “Where I come from you are a legend and it is such an honor to even be on the same investigation as you.” She talked extremely fast and her voice seemed to come all the way up from her diaphragm. “Word, girl, I have been wanting to meet you
forever.”

“Glad to know you, Yolie,” Des said, a bit blown away by her motor. Yolie Snipes was a girl in a hurry. She had a latina’s creamy mocha skin and gleaming brown eyes, but her big lips and wide-bottomed bootay spelled sister all the way. So did the braids. She had a thin one-inch scar across her left cheek that looked as if it had been done by a razor, maybe a box cutter. She wore silver studs in her ears, no makeup or lipstick. She was bigged up—had a weight-lifter’s rippling arms. She wore the portrait of a woman’s face tattooed on her left biceps with the initials
AC
written underneath it.

“Walk this back for us, Des,” Soave said. “You have some concerns about the body?”

“I do, although we all know that this was a man with his share of personal problems. And it certainly plays suicide. Looks as if he drove his Jeep up here late last night, got himself drunk, and threw his bad self off a cliff.”

“Damned crazy fool,” Soave said disapprovingly. “Here’s a young guy pulling down millions, is married to a world-class hottie. Why go and do that?”

“It wasn’t making him happy, Rico.”

“Did you find a note?”

“No, I didn’t. But I did bag his cell.” She popped her trunk and handed it over. “He placed a call on it from right here at around one-thirty.” They could learn the exact time from his cell phone record. “The words he used sounded an awful lot like good-bye.”

Soave glanced at her curiously. “You know who he called?”

“I do. It was Mitch.”

“Who, Berger?” Soave had always been bewildered by Mitch’s presence in her life. “Are you telling me he and Tito Molina were tight?”

“Not exactly. Tito went after him yesterday.”

“Sure, sure, I saw it on the news last night,” Yolie spoke up. “Tito whooped this movie critic’s ass on account of he gave him a bad review.”

“You’re not saying that’s why he killed himself, are you?” Soave asked. “Because Berger hurt his little feelings?”

“No, I don’t believe so,” Des replied, wondering if Mitch was thinking this.

“Well, what did he say to Berger?”

“You can get the exact words from him. He’s waiting to hear from you.”

“Okay, good,” Soave said. “What else have we got?”

“Tito’s ride.” Des pointed out the Jeep’s freshly scraped paint job.

“Could be this happened earlier in the day,” Yolie suggested, kneeling for a better look. “If they phoned in an accident report then the car rental people will have a record of it. Then again, he might have sideswiped somebody on his way up here last night. I’ll see if anyone reported it, maybe canvass those farmhouses down the road. Could be somebody heard him hit a tree or something.”

This was a sharp one, Des observed. Her mind broke down all of the angles in a flash. “There’s an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps up at the top of the cliff. Also some spent matches. I didn’t see anything else.”

“Yolie, why don’t you go have a look?” Soave said. “I’ll check out the body with Des.”

“I’m on it.” Yolie immediately went charging off.

“It’s real slippery up there,” Des called after her. “Watch your step.”

“I always do,” Yolie Snipes responded, smiling at her over her shoulder.

“She’s an eager one, isn’t she?” Des said as she watched her make her way across the parking lot, big bottom shake-shake-shaking. Des could only imagine what was happening to the girl’s front end.