Once bitten, p.28
Once Bitten, page 28
‘Then I really started to scare myself, like why do half a job, why not scare yourself shitless? I was thinking about the text I got just after seven o’clock while I’m still with Dupree. That it was a signal the other cop sent him. The first one’s dealt with. Send the other guy. Me. So Dupree ends the bullshit meeting knowing the first thing I’ll do is see what the text was, and then head up there thinking Laurence is still waiting for me. While actually it’s the killer waiting for me. Then, lucky for me, some dog walker finds Laurence dead before I get there. Now they’re really looking for me, the person they think is working with Laurence and knows everything he does. And they probably took his cell phone so they know who he’s spoken to recently.’
Evan bit his tongue, didn’t increase Prosky’s distress by confirming it.
He also wanted to say, that’s pretty good. Maybe comment on how fear sharpens the mind. Because Prosky had put together a convincing scenario. All it needed was to find a way to work Judge Hughes into it and it’d be perfect. That was something else he kept to himself.
And although it sounded as if he didn’t care about Prosky’s predicament, that he was trying to shirk responsibility, he couldn’t see any way to avoid saying what he said next.
‘What do you want me to do about it?’
Prosky shook his head helplessly.
‘I don’t know. At first all I wanted to do was talk to somebody about it. Like a pressure valve, stop it building inside my head. But it’s made it worse, saying it out loud. It all sounds so plausible like I’m reading a real case. I’ve spent nearly as long trying to pull it apart, and I can’t. I can’t find any holes in it.’
Evan could’ve told him that didn’t make it true. Except fear doesn’t live in things that happen, but in things that might. And, almost always, in things that never will. There were no words that would reassure the guy. Like most people, Prosky was not one to shoulder a burden alone, all he wanted was someone to share it with, or, better still, unload it on.
Like Crow before him, Prosky had put him in an impossible situation. There was a line and he had to decide whether to cross it. He had a perfect short-term solution to Prosky’s worries. Offer him refuge at Pentecost’s house as he’d done with Lucia. She’d only stayed one night, so the room was available—or at least the couch was, if he reclaimed the bed. Either way, he’d be going way beyond what Dupree had warned him not to do—withhold any information he might have or acquire. He’d be actively working against him.
The question was, was Prosky right? Was Dupree involved? And what about the possibility of other cops being implicated with him? The lovely Detective Rachel Lang for instance? The person into whose care, or otherwise, he’d delivered Lucia. Could a person so similar to Guillory be involved with a serial killer and a dirty chief of police?
In the absence of knowing, he didn’t have a choice.
‘You can stay with me if you like. I’m at a friend’s house so it can’t be traced to me.’
Prosky jumped at the offer. Evan asked him if he wanted to ride with him—hidden in the trunk if he wanted—or whether he’d follow in his own car.
‘We’ll go in yours, but I want to go to mine first.’
They left the boat, made their way to Prosky’s car. There, Prosky checked his phone to make sure it wasn’t about to die, then locked it in the glove box.
‘I’ve had it turned off all evening,’ he explained. ‘Apart from when I called you and when I was expecting your call to let me know you’d arrived. Turn yours off now.’
Evan did as he asked. Nobody was likely to call him before the morning. Depending on how much of Prosky’s paranoia rubbed off on him, he might keep it switched off while at Pentecost’s house, switch it on when out and about.
Prosky opted to sit in the front passenger seat and not curl up in the trunk despite mild teasing from Evan. Strangely enough, he became bolder and less scared as the journey progressed, no doubt due to the passage of time, Evan’s continued presence, the promise of an untraceable bed, and a mind full of images of Dupree’s elite hit squad surrounding his car in the Newburyport Harbor parking lot, ha, ha!
But even the growing confidence Evan felt in the seat beside him didn’t prepare him for what Prosky said as they got closer to town.
‘I want to go to the office.’
‘What for?’
‘I’m sure there’s a copy of the photograph Laurence was talking about in Dupree’s office. The one of the party he threw for his reappointment. The killer’s in it. He’s the one Laurence wanted me to identify.’
Evan made the short detour, didn’t take the wind out of Prosky’s sails by asking him what he planned to do with it if he was right. He waited in the car while Prosky let himself into the office, their thinking being that should Prosky come across anyone else at two-thirty in the morning, he’d be able to explain himself easily enough. Not so, if he had Evan in tow.
He was back out five minutes later, his prize clutched into his body. He kept it that way as Evan drove off, didn’t let go of it until they reached Pentecost’s house. Even then, he waited until they were safely inside, the door locked.
Finally, he showed it to Evan.
As Prosky had said, it showed Dupree and a room full of party-goers smiling for the camera. It was mounted in a plain black frame, the sort used to frame diplomas. But it was a high-quality photograph, not a clipping from a newspaper. Clearly Dupree had used his influence to get a high-definition copy of the original. Evan identified three people he recognized. Chief Comb-Over himself and his secretary, Misty. And Detective Rachel Lang. Half-turning away from the camera, as if she didn’t want to be recognized. There was one person he specifically didn’t see. Judge J.J. Hughes. He passed it back to Prosky.
Prosky scanned it quickly. From the speed, it was obvious he was doing the opposite to Evan—trying to identify those few people he didn’t know. He tapped the face of a man standing near the back of the crowd.
‘I don’t know him.’ He tapped another face, nearer the front. ‘Or him. Everybody else I know.’ He shook his head, sadness replacing the triumphant note that had been in his voice a moment ago. ‘It’s a shame we’ll never know who it is that Laurence wanted me to identify, poor guy.’
Evan wasn’t a pedant. Even if he had been, he’d still have kept his thoughts to himself.
Laurence will never be able to tell us. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to find out some other way.
The hard way.
44
Early next morning Evan went out onto the back porch to enjoy the sun coming up over the water that he couldn’t watch going down over it, the back of the house facing east, as Lucia had pointed out. Prosky was still asleep, the stress and late hour getting to bed suggesting he’d be comatose for a while yet. As far as Evan was concerned, it was the best place for him given his own forced role of babysitter-cum-harborer of material witnesses.
The sun was warming his head nicely, his brains too. He was thinking.
He didn’t like Dupree.
Despite that, assume that there was no hidden agenda, that he’d merely taken out his annoyance at Evan on his unfortunate staff, wasting an hour of Prosky’s out-of-hours personal time before heading off to meet his own buddies. They weren’t monitoring Kent’s phone and he hadn’t been keeping Prosky occupied while an accomplice murdered Kent and then sent a text message luring Prosky to a similar fate.
If all of that were true, the killer had found Kent by other means. But how?
A first step would be to call Lang, ask her if they were tracking Kent’s phone. A dangerous thing to do if Prosky’s paranoia was justified and Lang was one of the cops involved with Dupree.
He thought about that, the warm sun and fresh sea air doing its magic.
It was difficult to avoid the trap of believing the people you like and mistrusting those you don’t, but he couldn’t change the fact that by the end of thinking it through he didn’t believe Lang was involved in anything Dupree might be doing, the exposure of which could result in the end of his career—if now-dead, shit-for-brains Laurence Kent could be believed and he wasn’t simply on a personal crusade against one of the people he blamed for his fall from grace.
So Lang was okay, but not necessarily Dupree.
His thoughts were interrupted at that point by someone hammering impatiently on the front door. He went to confirm who he guessed it was.
He was right.
Lang herself. She pushed past him into the house when he opened the door, irritation in her voice.
‘What’s wrong with your phone?’
It was still switched off. He’d meant to switch it back on despite Prosky’s concerns, but had forgotten. He pulled it out, pretended to be surprised.
‘It’s dead.’
She wasn’t listening, looking around the room appreciatively.
‘Lucia was very impressed with the house.’
‘She ought to find herself a rich man to buy one for her. I’m sure the guy who owns this place would like her.’
She wagged her finger at him, carried on in the same vein despite the gesture.
‘Uh-uh. If she was going to do that, she’d get one with a west-facing back porch.’ She turned around, looked towards the back of the house, the sun streaming in through the windows. Nodded towards it. ‘Looks like it’s nice out there now. I’ll get comfortable while you put the coffee on.’
There was only one response.
‘Yes, Kate.’
‘And don’t you forget it,’ drifted back over her shoulder as she went outside, sat in the chair he’d recently vacated. Followed a moment later by, ‘No sugar.’
On balance, it couldn’t have worked out better with Prosky asleep upstairs—given that Lang not turning up at all wasn’t an option.
He found her stretched out like a lizard in the sun when he carried the coffees out a few minutes later. She sat up, accepted a cup.
‘I notice how you didn’t say I’m sweet enough already when I said no sugar.’
‘Did you want me to?’
She looked as horrified at the prospect as he did astonished.
‘Absolutely not. But after your silver-tongued slimeball remarks to Misty yesterday, I thought it might be hard-wired into your DNA. Or do you save it for the older ladies?’
‘You’ll have to wait and see.’
She made a rolling gesture with her hand, good start but keep it coming. He obliged.
‘That’s a long way off, of course.’
He got an approving dip of the head.
‘Detective Guillory’s trained you well.’ She lifted her cup, a small wrinkle appearing at the end of her nose. ‘Although more instruction on coffee-making wouldn’t hurt.’
Pleasant though it was to sit in the warm early-morning sunshine, the light reflecting off the water making everything glow while Guillory’s good-looking double gently abused him, there was presumably a point to her visit, beyond not being able to contact him by phone.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure? It can’t be that you’re missing me already.’
A withering look answered the second statement before she replied to his question.
‘You probably talked to Kent more than anyone else. And I’ve met you enough times to know what you’re like. I’m guessing you’ve spent half the night awake thinking about it, like I have, the other half sleeping on it.’ She twirled her finger at her temple. ‘The old subconscious beavering away. I thought I’d call you, see if you’d remembered a name he might have mentioned. Give us some idea about who he was meeting.’
She could’ve just said, have you thought of anything? But that was women for you. Long-winded though it was, her answer told him something about her. She’d have Kent’s phone records soon enough, but she wasn’t happy waiting for them, the self-imposed pressure to be moving forward unrelenting.
With his recent conclusions about her and Dupree in his mind, he took the only option available to him. He pointed upwards.
She threw her eyes, the gesture easy to read. It’s too early for this sort of thing. Her tone was similarly weary.
‘I know, he was meeting his maker. Detective Guillory warned me about the disrespectful attitude. You probably laugh when an old lady slips on the ice.’
‘Only when I push her. But to answer your question, he was meeting someone you probably know well. Jan Prosky. He works in Dupree’s office.’
‘I know who Prosky is. He’s a Polack jerk.’ She sat forward in her chair, placed her still-full cup of coffee on the weathered boards of the porch. ‘The question is, how do you know?’
He pointed upwards again, explaining as he did so.
‘He told me. He’s asleep upstairs.’
Lang gawked at him as if, despite the early hour, he’d already had too much sun.
‘You want to talk me through that?’
‘Let me get something first.’
‘How about some decent coffee?’
He ignored the remark, went to fetch the framed photograph of Dupree’s reappointment celebration. But he didn’t bring it out immediately. He wouldn’t be seeing it again once it was in Lang’s sweaty mitts. He pulled out his phone, took a couple shots of it. Took his time to make sure they came out right, not spoiled by the reflection of the flash off the glass. Wishing he’d thought to do it properly and remove it from the frame the previous night after Prosky went to bed. He checked the result, satisfied that everyone was sufficiently identifiable to a person who knew them. Then he took it outside, kept it against his leg, the front hidden from her view when he took his seat again. She gave it, and him, a curious look, didn’t say anything.
Then he took her through Prosky’s story, all the way to the point where he’d asked Prosky why he hadn’t gone to the police.
Lang was ahead of him.
‘Why you? He hadn’t done anything wrong, why not come to us?’
He gave her the framed photograph. Her brow creased.
‘I remember that. I didn’t want to go, but I was told how we all had to pull together, make it look like Dupree’s a popular guy.’
‘That’s why you’re turning away? A silent protest?’
‘Maybe the guy in front of me farted, I don’t know.’ She waved the photo frame at him. ‘What’s the point of showing me this?’
‘Kent wanted Prosky to identify somebody in that photograph for him. Somebody he thought was involved with Dupree in something that would’ve ended Dupree’s career.’
He let her figure it out for herself. She started with a compliment for him.
‘I hate to say it, but you were right. The guy had shit for brains. Kent seriously thought Dupree was involved in something illegal with other cops and that’s why Prosky didn’t come forward? Because he thinks a cop might have killed Kent?’
He opened his hands wide.
‘That’s what he told me.’
She studied the photograph for a minute. He guessed she was identifying the people she knew, those she didn’t. He was wrong. She was looking through it, her mind elsewhere.
‘You obviously don’t believe it, or you wouldn’t have told me.’
He grinned at her, let her figure the rest of it out. Her eyes went up into her head when she did, nodding to herself at the returned compliment.
‘I’m honored. You think it might be true about Dupree, but I’m not one of the dirty cops he’s working with.’
‘Kate Two could never be dirty.’
‘And don’t you forget it.’
‘We still have to figure out how the killer found Kent.’
She went back to studying the photograph, for real this time. Talking her thoughts through out loud as they came to her.
‘If Kent was right—’
‘Are you even considering that possibility?’
‘Can’t rule it out. It means he thought the killer was in this photograph.’
‘And he was hoping Dupree was involved with them, because that’d make a really great headline. Not quite as good as, Chief Dupree is the dyslexic killer, but a close second.’
Her mouth turned down at the thought of it.
‘I knew he was up to something . . .’
‘Just not with me.’
He’d have liked her to agree explicitly. Instead, she tapped the photo frame with a fingernail.
‘Going back to this, the fact that he was killed kind of implies the killer agreed with him. They’re in it. Except we’ve got a problem. Thanks to your—’
‘Meddling?’
‘—your input, we’re looking at the possibility’—she put an exaggerated amount of emphasis on the word—‘that Judge Hughes is the killer. And she’s not in the photograph. Although I don’t know why, given they’d been in business together and still had a professional law enforcement relationship.’
‘Unless she specifically didn’t want to be seen with him.’
She shook her head.
‘No. You’re over-thinking it. Probably a prior engagement, is all.’
‘Have you located her yet?’
She shook her head again, still staring at the photograph. He got the feeling she was looking through it again.
‘No. I went there early this morning before I tried to call you. She’s not there.’ Her tone suggesting no news was simply bad news biding its time. ‘The neighbors still hadn’t seen her. Told me they’d be sure to let me know the minute they do. So I don’t get them out of bed every damn morning.’ She smiled, a quick flash. ‘Can’t beat personal interest to get the public working with you.’
She stood up, stretched. Looked unhappily at her now-cold coffee.
‘I’m going inside to make some decent coffee. You can go wake sleeping beauty.’
