(1995) Chain of Evidence Read online

  Wearing plastic gloves in this kind of heat was oppressive. His fingers were waterlogged and the skin shriveled. Using his fingertip, he explored the hole. “Let’s shoot it,” he requested.

  She fixed both cameras with macro adapters and fired off a round of closeups—two from the color-transparency Nikon and two from the Canon black-and-white. As she did so, Dartelli searched for the preventer and screw that had been removed. Richardson picked up on this, and without a word, joined him in his search. They checked under the beds, the bare drawers of the clothes chest, rimmed with black cigarette burns.

  “Not here,” she announced.

  “No,” Dartelli agreed, meeting eyes with her. “Roman,” he called out to Kowalski, who had gone back to flirting with the manager in the hallway and seemed bothered by the interruption.

  Dartelli stated, “You checked the guy’s record.”

  “So?”

  “Off of ID found on the body, or his registered name?”

  “Registered name,” the other detective replied.

  Stupid shit, Dartelli thought. He inquired irritably, “You did or did not check the body for identification?”

  “Coroner will do that when he inventories the personal effects. You want to go sponging around in that mess, be my guest.”

  Dartelli headed straight out of the room, passing the detective and the manager.

  Kowalski called out to him, his voice like that of a child who was missing the point. “What the fuck are you doing, Dart?”

  Dartelli didn’t answer.

  He enlisted the help of the two large men from the coroner’s body wagon to help him roll Stapleton. Samantha Richardson, showing a great deal of internal strength, photographed the grotesque body, including closeups, and then together the three men heaved the body over, two patrolmen shielding the body from the media and gawkers with a hotel bedsheet used as a curtain.

  Dartelli found the searching of the man’s warm blood-soaked pockets both tedious and trying, though blood and guts no longer bothered him. He had become numb to such things. Richardson documented the entire process on film, including the contents of each pocket: a small black comb in the back jeans pocket; a thin wallet in the front left—confirming the man’s identity as David Stapleton; and in the front right pocket, some quarters and dimes, a stick of gum, a packaged condom, and the special screwdriver required to remove the window’s preventer.

  Encouraged by discovery of the screwdriver, Dartelli searched each pocket three times, growing a little more disgusted and a good degree more frantic with each attempt. The missing preventer was just the kind of annoying detail that would haunt him and increase his suspicions, and thereby, his sense of guilt.

  Richardson, changing rolls of film, suggested the dead man’s watch pocket.

  The detective had not noticed this pocket, sewn below the belt line, but above the right pocket; he could hear the voice of Walter Zeller chiding him for the oversight. Zeller had a low tolerance for such mistakes.

  Distant lightning flashed in the clouds, electrifying the sky. A moment later, thunder rumbled and rolled down the Connecticut River, sounding like rocks spilling down a hill, echoing in the caverns created by the downtown high-rises. It was a night that Dartelli would have liked to climb to the roof of his apartment building and drink a beer while awaiting the rain—enjoying the light show, or to drive a ways out of town and take his dog Mac for a walk in the woods. Instead, he had his hand in a dead man’s bloody pocket, and a chest knotted in fear.

  He shoved his gloved index finger into the tiny pocket and withdrew the small tab of aluminum and the screw used to fix it to the window frame.

  A few huge drops of rain slammed onto the sidewalk like small bombs.

  Richardson glanced up into the sky. “I love the summer rains,” she said, shaking her short hair side to side.

  Relief swept through Dartelli at having found this piece of evidence. Even so, the suicide continued to bother him, and though he willed it to go away the feeling persisted. He looked into the mashed face of the victim—he could just make out where the nose had been. An hour earlier this man had been alive, and the warmth of the body, the immediacy of the death, had an unusual and profound effect on the detective: He cared about the victim. Rookies cared. Family members cared. Eleven-year veterans could not afford such indulgence.

  The rain fell harder and a light breeze picked up and moved some of the hot dry air, and the night opened like a curtain. The rain washed the red blood off his hand and the aluminum preventer and screw that he held there. Rivulets of blood dripped to the sidewalk, diluted and pink.

  “It’s like God’s answer to the heat,” she said, her face still trained toward the heavens, her blouse wet and translucent.

  “Yeah,” Dartelli said. “I know what you mean.” He wanted to talk to the redhead. He wanted to talk to Stapleton’s girlfriend—if she could be found—regardless of her hair color. He wanted this thing closed up tight, his secret protected, but he feared it wouldn’t be. The faceless head seemed to be looking up at him. “What?” he asked the face suddenly, sharply. Angry.

  The rain fell more strongly. The coroners approached with the body bag. They wanted the body. Now. They wanted out of the rain.

  “Joe,” Richardson said, her voice revealing her concern over his outburst, “let’s get out of the rain.”

  Dartelli couldn’t take his eyes off the face. It wanted something from him.

  “Joe …,” she said, stepping closer, noticeably upset.

  Dartelli stood and walked past her, off into the rain toward the Volvo with its flashing lights. Another clap of thunder tumbled from the sky, shaking the windows of a nearby building as it landed. He didn’t feel like talking to anybody. Not even her.

  He regretted his own past actions, and he wished to God that he had a second chance; he prayed to God that David Stapleton was a fluke coincidence. People do jump out of windows, his reasonable voice argued.

  But in his heart, he knew better.

  CHAPTER 2

  Teddy Bragg looked like a candidate for bypass surgery. Dartelli worried about him. His skin was the color of watery cottage cheese and he lacked the nervous energy that had given him the longtime nickname Buzz. His eyes were bloodshot and his breath bad, and he had buttoned his shirt incorrectly, making him into an old man, but Dartelli didn’t have the heart to point out the buttoning error because Teddy Bragg took such things extremely personally, and when his mood went sour, everyone around him suffered.

  “I got a total staff of two, don’t forget,” he said, apologizing first, which troubled Dart. “And I gotta run this by Kowalski—I’m perfectly aware of that—but you’re the one who asked about the apartment, so you’re the one I called.”

  The lab ceiling was water-stained acoustic tile, the floor, paint-stained cement. Too much stuff had been taped and removed from the walls, leaving dark holes in the cream-colored paint. What remained of the evidentiary lab communicated by an open door with the pantry-size area in which a behemoth photo developer churned out crime scene photographs and mug shots, lending an inescapable toxic odor to both areas that gave Dartelli a quick headache, and Teddy Bragg his rheumy eyes.

  “I can wait if I have to, Buzz, it’s only a suicide.” Lies. One begot the next.

  “That wasn’t your attitude on Monday.”

  “It’s Thursday. I have other fish to fry.” Dartelli tried this out on the man, despite the churning in his stomach and the tightness in his chest. For four days he had slept poorly, haunted by the image of Stapleton’s crushed face, and the suspicion that the past had surfaced like Ahab’s whale. He wanted whatever Bragg had, wanted it badly, but felt more like his alcoholic mother when she tried to hide her bottle. No one must know, he reminded himself.

  “I gave it to Sam,” he said, meaning Samantha Richardson, the other half of Bragg’s department. Richardson handled all of the photography and most of the evidence collection, while Bragg dealt with the scientific analysis t
hat wasn’t shipped out to the State Police, administration, and most of the court testimony. “I sent her with a uniform as an escort because I was hoping to get her back alive.”

  “Stapleton’s apartment,” Dartelli clarified, itching for whatever information Bragg could supply and trying to appear nonchalant about it. The area north of the city where Stapleton had lived was not safe for a Caucasian out of uniform, even in the daytime.

  “We didn’t lift any red pubic hairs or head hairs, for that matter. And though the neighbors knew there was a girlfriend involved—a lot of shouting, evidently—she, Sam, didn’t get a name from them.”

  Dartelli had wanted to handle these interviews himself but had decided that on a north end suicide it might attract unnecessary attention within the department for him to express such interest. Leaving it to Bragg and Richardson had been difficult. Dart liked to maintain control, but he had complete faith in Bragg—at least when the man was healthy.

  “No name?” Dartelli asked, frustrated by the thought he might have lost his chance to connect Stapleton to whoever had been in that room with him.

  Lots of unanswered questions remained: Why had Stapleton traveled downtown to the De Nada, if his intention had been to commit suicide? And if his intention had not been to commit suicide, then why did he come prepared with the special screwdriver? And if his sole intention had been to have a whore on the night of his suicide, then why had Vice/Narcotics failed to produce the missing redhead? Given the two-hundred-dollar finder’s fee offered for information leading to the woman’s identity, it seemed inconceivable to Dartelli that they still had no solid leads. This was not a big town.

  “I didn’t say that,” Bragg corrected, “just that the neighbors were worthless as usual.”

  “You did get a name!” Dartelli said, seizing on the fact and belying his external calm. Give me the fucking name! he felt like shouting.

  “Sheesh, think you won the lottery or something,” Bragg said suspiciously. Knowing he had the man, Bragg was withholding the vital information. “No sign whatsoever of this woman currently residing in the apartment with Stapleton, except for an empty closet and a couple of empty drawers in the bathroom. Maybe she moved out, or something. And as I said: no red hairs—all black. Sam said the place was trashed up pretty bad; guy lived like a slob.”

  “Her name?” Dartelli asked, as calmly as possible.

  “And she didn’t find a note, or anything even close to explaining why he might have took the dive.” Studying Dart’s reaction, he said, “I didn’t think you’d like that.”

  “I need the woman’s name, Buzz. That’s where I start.”

  Attempting to sound definitive, Bragg stated, “You’re not going to ask us to compare fibers.” Adding quickly, “Not on a north end jumper, for Chrissakes. Put it to bed.”

  Dartelli hesitated and said, “Not for a north end jumper, no.”

  Bragg looked bothered. Dartelli couldn’t be sure if he was reading the man right, or if Bragg was indeed physically ill, but he was acting oddly, as if he might be concealing something. “Buzz?” Dartelli inquired, reminding himself at that moment of Ginny Rice because she always used Dart’s name as an interrogative, and it bothered him.

  “Priscilla Cole,” Bragg volunteered, heading off Dart’s inquiry. “Sam found phone and electric bills in the name of Priscilla Cole. Got to be the girlfriend.”

  Making note of it, Dartelli thanked the man.

  “What’s bugging you, anyway?” Bragg asked.

  Dartelli tried his best to wash the concern off his face. “Nothing.”

  “About this jump, I mean,” the lab man said. “I felt it from the get-go.”

  “I’ll be happier once I’ve talked to this redhead,” Dartelli explained. “Loose ends, you know.”

  “Zeller,” Bragg said.

  Dart’s throat constricted and he felt choked. Does Teddy know? he wondered.

  “He turned you into a worrier, just like him,” Bragg stated.

  The explanation flooded Dartelli with relief. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Dartelli managed to say, though his throat remained tight, causing him to sound emotional.

  Bragg nodded. “You could do worse than remind me of Walter Zeller,” Bragg complimented him.

  “Priscilla Cole,” Dartelli repeated, hoping to end the conversation. He didn’t want to be talking about Zeller.

  Escorting Dartelli past the smelly photo machine and to the door, Bragg said, “Stay tuned.”

  Dartelli left with a nagging bubble in his throat: “Stay tuned” was Teddy Bragg’s warning for something unexpected. Dartelli didn’t want any surprises in this investigation. The man jumped, he reminded himself.

  He headed upstairs feeling ill at ease and nauseated. Perhaps whatever illness Teddy Bragg had succumbed to was contagious.

  Bud Gorman looked like an underpaid, middle-aged accountant who had elected to allow his hair to fall out and couldn’t be bothered to disguise this with a rug. He had thick glasses, a gap between his front teeth, and a red nose with flanking Irish cheeks. Standing at five foot five inches, he wore a size forty-six-short sport coat, and had an eighteen-inch neck that made his neckties hang funny. There was enough glare coming off the top of his head to prompt Dartelli to want a pair of sunglasses. When he spoke, it sounded as if someone were choking him: He chain-smoked non-filters.

  “I don’t have shit on this girl Cole, Joe. My guess is this guy took damn good care of her, because she doesn’t have any kind of credit history. I mean nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Dartelli repeated, disgusted. Dead ends—they would etch it on his gravestone someday. Bud Gorman worked for GBT Credit Services, and as such had access to every credit database in the country. Any credit rating, bank account, or credit card account was his. He had access to the records of ninety percent of all major retail firms issuing personal credit, including all department stores, major oil companies, hotel chains, travel agencies, major airlines, and phone companies. If a person spent anything but cash, Bud Gorman could track it. Usually this was done for the purpose of protecting companies or tracking demographics, but for Joe Dartelli it was done as a public service, quietly, and for free. Bud Gorman liked sport cars—thanks to Dart, he had not paid a speeding ticket in over five years. If James Bond had a license to kill, Bud Gorman had a license to drive.

  “And I tried to find you something, Joe. You gotta know that’s right—because I could hear it in your voice, and I can see it in your face now. And I feel like shit that I can’t help you, but that’s the way it is with some people.” He studied Dart’s disappointment. “If I had access to government entitlement programs, I have a hunch that’s where your Ms. Cole would be. And I do have some contacts over at IRS, though as you know, my gut take on this is that she’s not filing income anyway, so why use up our welcome over something like this? But it’s your call, I want you to know.”

  “No credit history?” Dartelli was incredulous.

  “That address is damn near in the projects, Joe. It’s not that surprising. Not really.”

  “I’ve lost her?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Gorman said, dragging a stout hand nervously over his shiny head. “Maybe not,” he repeated.

  “Help me out here, Bud.”

  “Insurance,” the man said, speaking clearly. “Maybe she’s covered, maybe not, but if she is then she’ll be in the database, and her address will be current.”

  “Health insurance?” Dartelli questioned.

  “Fair odds that she’s covered, Joe.”

  “Lousy odds,” Dartelli argued. “The David Stapletons of this world are the exact demographic that go without health insurance.”

  “Shit, this is an insurance town, Joe. Everybody’s got some kind of coverage.”

  Dartelli knew it was true: Hartford people carried inordinate amounts of insurance, the same as Rochesterians used only Kodak film. But what this meant to Dartelli—what Gorman was suggesting—carried a personal agenda for
the detective. The last thing that Dartelli wanted was to go hat in hand to Ginny Rice asking for favors. And she was the only insurance person that he could think of. I won’t do it, Dartelli promised himself.

  A promise broken with his next phone call.

  CHAPTER 3

  By five o’clock on a hot August day, the Jennings Street booking room held an air of confusion: voices shouting; detainees complaining; attorneys arguing; parents protesting; police officers of every rank, dress, and both sexes attempting to manage the chaos. The special task force on gang violence had brought in twenty-three Hispanic teens for booking and questioning. Dartelli and others had been enlisted for the raid.

  The air-conditioning had failed two hours earlier. The air hung heavy with the tangy odor of perspiration and the deafening roar of constant cursing and swearing. The room, like the building, combined cream-colored cinder block walls with vinyl tiled floors in a urine white. The acoustic ceiling tiles were stained from the leaks that had been ongoing throughout the building for the past three years. The place reminded Dartelli of a cross between a post office and a prison. At the moment, it felt more like a high school principal’s office.

  Dartelli was consulting with a fellow detective on how to book one of the kids found in possession of a nine-inch switchblade. The two were speaking in normal voices despite the cacophony. He glanced up as a red file folder squirted between a pair of bodies, and he registered that this folder was directed at him. It shook, inviting him to take hold. And then he saw attached to the folder a graceful, feminine hand, and attached to this hand, an elegantly muscled and tan forearm covered in fine, sun-bleached hairs. Before he saw her face, he identified the voice of Abby Lang.

  “Joe? This is for you,” spoke that voice. The folder shook again. “We should talk.”

  He had never really looked at her arms before; he didn’t spend a lot of time looking at a person’s arms. But she had a nice pair.