The Front (11 page)

What Win has in several brown paper bags isn't incontrovertibly associated with anything except his own fears, his own sense of urgency. If Lamont is involved in something sinister and is implicating him, he intends to find out privately before he does anything about it. Imaginative guy that he is, it's the
why
part of the equation that has him completely bewildered and unnerved. Why would someone break into Nana's house and apparently steal nothing but his gym bag? Why would this person even know about Nana in the first place, or that Win stops by her house almost daily to check on her, or that he routinely leaves his gym bag because of her laundry magic, or that she routinely fails to lock her doors or set her alarm, making it simple to enter, grab, and run?

Inside the lab building, an officer named Johnny mans the front desk, engrossed in whatever he's looking at on his computer screen.

“How ya doing?” Win says.

“You seen this?” Pointing at the screen. “Friggin' unbelievable.”

He plays the YouTube clip of Lamont in the ladies' room. It's the first Win's heard of it, and he analyzes it carefully. Green Escada suit, Gucci ostrich-skin pocketbook, and matching high-heel shoes, obviously filmed at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He recalls that minutes after her lecture, she sent him away to get her a latte, and for about an hour, she was out of his sight. Irrelevant, he reasons. It wouldn't have been a big deal for someone to hide in the ladies' room as long as the person had thought this whole thing out, and obviously, someone put a lot of thought into it. Preplanning. A recon to see when she was going into the ladies' room, making sure it was empty before hiding in a stall. A woman. Or someone dressed like one. Could have been a man, if no one was looking.

“Was a lousy thing to do,” Johnny is saying. “Someone did that to my wife, I'd kill 'em. Looks like you got a mess on your hands, though. Mick was in the director's office not even an hour ago, about the . . . What's her name? The murdered lady from the blind school that's all over the news.”

“Janie Brolin.”

‘That's the one.”

“Lamont probably sent Mick down here because she's worried about any alleged evidence, although I can't imagine anything relating to the case still exists. Regardless, she'd want to make sure none of the scientists talk to reporters,” Win says. “That's what I think, anyway.”

“So don't I.” A Massachusetts native's weird way of saying
So do I.
“To give her credit? Wow.” Shakes his shaved head, watching Lamont on YouTube again. “She's so cold, you forget she's hot, you know what I'm saying? She's got some set of . . .”

“Tracy around?” Win says.

“Let me buzz her.” Can't take his eyes off Lamont in the ladies' room.

Tracy's in, and Win follows a long corridor, bypasses evidence intake, walks into Crime Scene Services, where she's seated at her computer station, looking at two enlarged fingerprints on a split screen, arrows pointing to minutiae she's visually comparing.

“We're having a little argument,” she says, not looking up.

Win sets down his paper bags.

She points to the left side of the screen, then to the right. “Computer counts three ridges between these two points. I'm counting four. As usual, the computer isn't seeing what I'm seeing. My fault, was in a hurry, didn't clean it up first, took a shortcut and ran it through auto Encode. Anyway, what can I do for you? Because whenever you drop by with little brown paper bags, it's a clue.”

“A sort of official case, and another case that isn't official at all. So I'm really just asking for a favor.”

“Who, you?”

“Can't tell you the details.”

“Don't want to know. Ruins my objectivity and reinforces my basic belief that everybody's guilty.”

“Okay. One Fresca can I fished out of the trash the other day. One Raggedy Ann note and envelope, don't laugh. Prints on the envelope. Could be from my damn landlord, whose prints you have in the database for exclusionary reasons, since he's touched stuff in the past. I didn't mess with the note, and the sender isn't really in doubt, but I'd like these items checked, including DNA under the envelope's flap and on the Fresca can, if you can beg, borrow, and steal from your DNA pals. We've also got a candle and a bottle of wine, a very nice pinot, may have my prints on it. Maybe the lady in the wineshop, whose prints will also be in the database for exclusionary reasons, since she's also a cop. I've got photographs of shoe impressions, and the nine-mil cartridge I used for a scale. Didn't have a ruler handy, sorry.”

“And what is it you want me to do with these shoe impressions?”

“Hang on to them for now, in case we recover something to compare them with.” Such as his pair of stolen Prada shoes, should they ever surface.

“Finally,” he says, “there's the packaging from a disposable camera.”

“We've gotten in a number of them of late from different departments, all Middlesex County.”

“I know, and the cops think you can't be bothered.”

“I really can't be bothered,” she says. “Their crime scene guys haven't found anything on them, and send them in anyway, in hopes we have a magic wand, I guess. Maybe they watch too much TV.”

“You talking about the FRONT's crime scene guys?”

“Probably,” she says.

“Well, that would be one guy, who's a woman, and she doesn't believe in magic wands,” Win says. “And since my disposable camera package is the same kind as the ones you've already gotten, how about we make them a priority, a
do-it-now
sort of thing. And I have an idea.”

“Whenever you come in here with your trick-or-treat bags, it's a
do-it-now
sort of thing, and you always have ideas.”

“What would you expect a copper thief to have all over his person, including his hands?” Win asks.

“Dirt. Since he's probably touching dirty old oxidized gutters, roofing materials, all kinds of crap at construction sites . . .”

“Forget dirt. I'm talking about what might not be visible,” Win says. “I'm talking microscopic.”

“You want to examine these damn camera boxes under a microscope?”

“No,” he says. “Luminol. I want you to check as if you're looking for blood.”

 

 

 

He's ordering an iced coffee at Starbucks when he feels somebody behind him. Glances around. Cal Tradd.

At least he has the decency not to strike up a conversation in a public place. Win pays, grabs napkins, a straw, heads outside and waits by his car, waits for an overdue confrontation. In a few minutes, Cal appears, sipping one of those coffee drinks that looks like an ice-cream sundae. Piled high with whipped cream, chocolate, a cherry on top.

“You following me?” Win asks. “Because I'm feeling followed.”

“I'm that obvious, huh?” Licking whipped cream, wearing nice sunglasses. Maui Jim's, about three hundred bucks. “Actually, I was heading to the police department. Probably just like you are. Otherwise, I don't think you'd be jarring your already jangled nerves with several shots of espresso at a Starbucks in little ole Watertown. Anyway, noticed your car.”

“Really? How'd you know it was mine?”

“I know your apartment building. Matter of fact, almost rented a place there my freshman year. Second floor, the south end, overlooking that teeny-tiny square of blacktop in back where Farouk lets you park your Ducati, your Harley, your Hummer, this thing”—indicating the Buick—“whatever you happen to be riding or driving.”

Win stares at him, sunglasses to sunglasses.

“Ask Farouk. He'll remember me,” Cal says. “Skinny little blond kid whose overly protective mother decided her precious, fragile boy couldn't possibly live in your former school building. Not that the location's dangerous, in reality. But you know how people make judgments based on a person's appearance, demeanor, socioeconomic status. And here I am—rich, a musician, a writer, straight A's, faggy-looking. A walking hate crime waiting to happen.” Dips his tongue back into the whipped cream. “I saw you that ill-fated day, by the way. No reason you'd remember. But we were leaving and you trotted by, jumped in your unmarked Crown Vic and sped off. And my mom said, ‘Good God in heaven, who's that gorgeous man?' Small world, huh?”

“Save your six-degrees-of-separation crap for someone else. I'm not talking to you,” Win says.

“I didn't ask you to talk. You'd be better off listening.” Watching traffic go by on Mt. Auburn Street, a major thor oughfare that connects Watertown to Cambridge.

Win opens his car door.

Cal sucks on the straw, says, “I've been working on an investigative series about copper thefts—an international problem, huge, as you well know. There's this nutcase woman. Cunning in some ways, stupid in others, and overall, crazy.”

Raggedy Ann,
Win thinks.

“I've seen her around in places and situations that have my antenna up—way up,” Cal continues. “There's this guy Bimbo. A real Ali Baba scumbag. I've interviewed him a couple times. So maybe three hours ago, I show up at his den of thieves to talk some more, and there she is, collecting cash from him. Same weirdo I've seen around Harvard Square, dressed all freaky like Raggedy Ann. Same weirdo I've seen hanging around Monique on a number of occasions.”

“Hanging around her? How so?” Win leans against the car, crosses his arms.

Cal shrugs, sips his chocolaty coffee. “Places where she's given talks, doing press conferences, outside the law school, the courthouse. I've seen this weirdo lady at least half a dozen times in the past few weeks, always dressed in tights, clunky shoes. I didn't think much about it until I recognized her at the scrapyard today. Dressed completely differently, in baggy clothes, a baseball cap. Selling scrap copper. I just thought you'd want to know.”

“You ask what's-his-name about her?”

“Bimbo? Sure did. Said the expected. Didn't know anything. Translated, she's selling stolen stuff, right?”

“Then what?”

“Followed her for a while. She has this Woodstock-era VW van, curtains in the windows, probably sleeps in the damn thing. We're not even across the Mystic River when I get this feeling somebody's following me. Another van. This one a construction-type van, maybe one I'd seen earlier at Bimbo's. So I got the hell out of Dodge, got off in Charlestown.”

“You mean the intrepid reporter gave up the chase?”

“These copper thugs in Chelsea, you kidding me?” Cal says. “Screw with them and you end up in a car trunk with your throat cut.”

A sergeant lets Win into a cramped, dank space, dimly lit, nothing inside but old metal filing cabinets and shelves stacked with dusty logbooks and boxes. The Watertown Police Department's records room is a former bank vault, one floor below the jail.

“I don't guess you have some sort of reference system for what's in here,” Win says.

“Oh, I'm sorry. The librarian's out sick today and her ten assistants are on vacation. You find what you want, pull the record. No photocopying. No pictures. You can take notes. That's it.”

The air is thick with dust and the smell of mold. Already Win feels his sinuses closing up.

“How about I find what I need and you put me upstairs someplace. Maybe in the detective division,” Win says. “An interview room would work.”

“Jeez, more bad news. The UN's in town, tying up the conference room. The records got to stay in here, meaning if you want to look at them, you got to stay in here.”

“This the only light?”

Fluorescent light tubes, one dead, the other losing its will to live.

“Can you believe it? All our maintenance guys are on strike.” The sergeant disappears with his big ring of keys.

Win turns on his tactical light, swipes it over shelves of large logbooks, decades of them going back to the twenties. No way. Without photocopies, he'll never get through these reports, would be like bushwhacking his way through a jungle without a machete. Under ordinary circumstances, given plenty of time, he manages to sort through dense pages of information, or, best of all, he's
so busy
he has one of the clerks in the unit read aloud on CD, which he downloads into his computer as an audio file. Amazing what he listens to as he drives, works out in the gym, jogs. By the time he goes to court, he's memorized every pertinent detail.

He climbs a stepladder, pulls down the log for 1962, looks for a work space, resorts to an open file drawer, places the log on top of it, starts flipping through pages, starts sneezing, his eyes itching, miserable. April 4, and he finds the handwritten entry for Janie Brolin's murder. He jots down the location of the crime—meaning her address, since she was murdered inside her apartment—and that one simple fact completely changes the scenario. He can't understand it. Nobody noticed? The Boston Strangler? You've got to be kidding. He keeps going through drawers. Cases aren't filed alphabetically but by an accession number that ends with the year. Her case is WT218-62. He scans labels on file drawers, opens what should be the right one, finds records jammed together so tightly he has to take out sections of them at a time or he can't see what's there.

He pulls the Brolin case, then riffles through dozens of files in the same drawer, having learned long ago it's not uncommon for information from one file to accidentally find its way into another. After an hour of itching, sneezing, his mouth tasting like dust, he comes across an envelope wedged in the back of the drawer, and written on it is the Brolin case number. Inside is a yellowed newspaper clipping about a twenty-six-year-old man named Lonnie Parris, struck by a car while crossing the street near the Chicken Delight on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. A hit-and-run that occurred in the early-morning hours of April 5—the day after Janie Brolin's murder. That's it. Just an old newspaper clipping.