Triple Play, page 9
part #1 of Jake Hines Series
“Wait,” I said. “You know who’d be next of kin?”
They looked at each other. “He’s not married, I’m pretty sure,” Vince said. “He still live at home, do you know?” he asked Harley. Harley shrugged. “Trying to think of his father’s name,” Vince said. “Lessee…Louie, Lewis? No, that’s his name. His Dad’s is Fred? no….”
“Ferdy,” Harley Mundt said.
“Right! That’s it, Ferdy LaPlante, works on the maintenance crew at the downtown Hilton, last I knew.”
I wrote it down. “Thanks. I’ll get back to you,” I said, and trotted toward the bench where Maddox was tenderly urging his still-shaking runner to his feet. A van from Methodist Hospital waited at the curb. A white-suited ward tech was taking over care of Jerry Creed, while a social worker quietly questioned Maddox. I remembered her from a domestic-abuse case, Erica somebody. Iron hand in an iron glove, I thought when I first encountered her. Confident voice, icy eyes, steely composure. Hey, maybe she’s Mother Teresa in deep disguise; my childhood left me unable to relate well to social workers.
Maddox appeared to split down the middle for half a minute, patting and murmuring encouragement to his patient while making the hand-off with his left side, while the right side of his face and head responded to Erica’s questions.
“–tough enough to find a dead guy first thing in the morning,” I heard him explaining,
“but when he touched the body and the hand fell off, looks like it shook him up pretty bad.”
Erica made notes in a tiny leather-covered notebook, her glance flicking repeatedly from Maddox to the weeping man. When she’d heard enough she said abruptly, in the middle of one of Maddox’s sentences, “Thanks, Officer,” and shook his hand. She had already started around the van to the driver’s side when I got there; I tagged her footsteps like a pesky kid, telling her who I was and why I needed time with her patient.
She slid behind the wheel, told me firmly that her first priority was getting this man to the hospital and evaluating his condition, and started the motor before I could argue. She handed out her card and said I might, if I wished, call her in a couple of hours. She bullied her way into traffic and left while I was still putting together a sentence about where I wished she would put her attitude.
Just as well, too. She had my witness. For a while, all roads to Jerry Creed would lead through Erica. Wasn’t that a fun thought? I clipped her card inside my notebook, and went back to my car.
The phone book listed three LaPlantes: Alfred, Constance, and Ferdinand. No listing for Louis. I dialed Ferdinand. After the fifth ring, a female voice said “Hel-lo?” in a voice that sounded as if it might be coming from the bottom of a well.
“Does Louis LaPlante live at this address?”
“Yeah.” Her breathing was labored; she wheezed.
“Could I speak to him, please?” You never know. There could be a live Louie as well as a dead one.
She coughed. “Who is this?” she finally managed, in a strangled voice.
I identified myself, trying to sound severe. The woman seemed immovable. She wheezed a few more times while she digested the information, then said petulantly, “Just a minute,” and set the phone down so that it bounced several times, punishing my ear. From a distance, I heard her call, “Ferd?” and get a short, sharp retort from someplace further away. There was a long, shouted conversation, perhaps between the back door and the yard, or the kitchen and the basement. Finally hard, quick footsteps came toward the phone, and a man’s voice, loud and impatient, said, “Yeah?”
I went through the whole identification rigmarole again. Ferdy LaPlante heard me out, then said, flatly, “My son ain’t here, Mister.”
“Do you know where I can reach him?”
Again that silence, then, “What is this?” he asked, getting angry. “Whadda you want callin’ me up this time of the morning?”
I was afraid he was going to hang up. I said, “Mr. LaPlante, I have a young male here, found dead in the park about an hour ago, and two people have identified him as Louis, or Frenchy, LaPlante. Now, if you have a son by that name, and you know where he is, I’d appreciate your saying so, and I won’t need to bother you any more.”
There was another silence, then his voice, a few feet from the phone, asked, “Francine? Louie say where he was goin’ last night?” Some muttering followed. He came back to me and said, “Our son lives here, mister, but he never come home last night. I went in to wake him for work a few minutes ago and he wasn’t in his bed. You think maybe something bad has happened to him?”
His voice grew smaller and more frightened as he talked, and broke at the end as though he might be going to cry. While I still had his attention, I said, very fast, “Mr. LaPlante, in a few minutes, I’m going to send a marked squad car to your house. It’ll be white with blue lettering and say “Rutherford Police Department” on the outside. The officers who come to the door will be in uniform, and will show you their identification. They’ll take you and Mrs. LaPlante to the building downtown where we’ll be transporting the–this person, and you can see for yourself if it’s your son. Our officers will stay with you there, and take you home again, and be ready to help you any way they can. Can you do that, Mr. LaPlante, can you and your wife come downtown and help us get this cleared up?” I did my best to make it sound like a community street-cleaning project.
I kept talking till I got him to say yes, but he was coming unstuck fast. I radioed Ed Gray and went over the day duty list with him, looking for a couple of experienced officers to send. We picked Stearns and Donovan. Al Stearns is a couple of years from retirement, he’s guaranteed unflappable, and Mary Agnes Donovan has a sweet, soft voice and four boys of her own.
When that was settled, I trotted back to the body, where Pokey was busy with his thermometer and little light.
“Is BCA van coming?” he asked me.
“Yes, but not till later. Probably afternoon. We’re gonna have to transport this one ourselves. How about that, Frank, can we ask the fire department for a lift or–”
“Probably. Yeah, I’ll get on it. What about pictures, though? You got your camera with you?”
“Yes. I’ll do crime scene, BCA can take the pictures in the lab. We can’t keep this body waiting here till afternoon.”
“Right on,” Pokey said. “I’m gonna get one of lab docs to do autopsy with me, too. No use waiting till tonight or maybe tomorrow for van, huh? Lot better autopsy if we do it now.”
Frank got on his radio. I found my camera and went back to the body, where Pokey was sniffing like a hound on a scent. “Funny smell, yah?” he asked me.
“Uh-huh. On the suit, isn’t it?”
He leaned toward the blouse and sniffed. “Yah. Smells what, stale?”
“I thought so. And like…old plastic sacks. I noticed it on Wahler, but I was thinking about so many other things at the time that I didn’t identify it. Guess it means the suit was stored someplace for quite a while.” Frank came back then and I said, “Smell the suit, Frank.” He confirmed the odor and I asked him, “Whaddya say about the mask and chestplate.?”
“The mask looks new, or almost. The chest protector looks really old, the old kind of leather straps we were using when I was in school, which is a hundred years ago. That particular glove I happen to know a lot about, because I’ve bought two of them for Kevin in the last year and a half. Kid can’t keep track of spit.” Kevin is Frank’s fifteen-year-old son. “And the shoes are those same old dogs with metal cleats, like on the Wahler boy.” He stared at me popeyed again. “Mismatched equipment from several periods, and a suit that’s been stored a long time. The killer has access to a storehouse, storeroom, someplace where used equipment is kept. Why not talk to the high schools today, Jake? What have we got, three public and two private? Catholic and Lutheran, that’s it for private, isn’t it?”
“Right. And Andy Dornoch for the City League stuff.”
“Well, sure, although the City doesn’t look after–well, he might have a lost-and-found bin. High schools are a better bet. Get somebody at the station to look up the superintendent, principal, whoever’s top dog at each school, then call ‘em and get ‘em to secure the supply rooms right away, and keep the key till you get there, okay? We have got to find out where this equipment is coming from! Oh, shit!” He had spied a van marked “KORN TV” pulling up to the curb. We watched as a reporter and video cameraman piled out.
“Now, how the Hell did they get onto this so fast?” Frank fumed. “I’ll head ‘em off. Here comes the ambulance, get ‘em over here quick, will you, Vince? Stay in touch, Jake.”
He marched toward the waiting reporter, like a good soldier moving toward the sound of the guns. He wasn’t going to be facing them alone, though, I saw; District Attorney Ed Pearce got out of his car at the curb and hustled directly toward the KORN van, drawn to the TV camera like a moth to the flame. Frank and Ed converged on the crew, and began saying as little as possible in very long sentences. The TV reporter, if she thought about it, could probably cut and paste most of what they were telling her out of old crime stories: unfortunate death/no details yet/really can’t speculate/more ASAP/keep you fully informed/feel free to call me anytime. Plus, how hard their capable staffs were working.
Frank had learned how to do this part of his job well; he kept the cameraman engaged, so that the lens stayed pointed at him, and unable to get past him for a shot of the body. He made eye contact with the reporter, bending his head to her questions as attentively as an anxious suitor. He would say only what he knew for sure: there is a dead person here. Why look like a donkey later because you said too much? But he would find several ways to say it, so she had some quotes to take back with her, and a sound bite to use.
Watching, Pokey shook his head and clucked ironically. “Goodness Gracious, Jake. Frank’s really got his bloomers bunched up, huh?”
“Rutherford is his town,” I explained, taking pictures as fast as I could point my camera.. “He was born here, his folks still live here and all his brothers and most of their kids. He’s been Chief six years. He feels responsible for keeping things nice.”
“Ah-hah.” I might have known Pokey would think that was a hoot. Before he was out of his teens, Adrian Pokornoskovic was repeatedly subjected to social engineering, Soviet style, which he once described to me as, “If bastards ain’t froze yet try starving.” The experience left him quick, ironic, and dubious of best-laid plans. He gets a lot of harmless amusement out of the antics of American control freaks.
The guys with the gurney reached us then. I took six more pictures while they set the braces on the legs and unzipped the body bag, and then we hustled off to the lab, roaring past the video cameraman, who took a long fade shot of the outside of the truck. I recognized Greg Prentiss behind the camera. Nice guy, good at his job. The station sends him out to get shots of a crime, he’s going to come back with something, even if it has to be tire tracks. I saw him in my rear-view mirror focusing on the blood in front of the backstop.
The two local stations rely mostly on network feeds to furnish Rutherford news junkies their horror fix around sundown. But while a trailer park wrecked in a tornado in Indiana is always good, and police taking multiple body bags away from a shooting spree in L. A. is very good, local events have the highest impact of all, even when they’re smaller. So this one body bag right here in Rutherford, along with the smear of blood in front of the backstop, would get large play on the Rutherford evening news shows. KORN would run the footage of this crime ahead of the pictures of stone-throwing Palestinians, weeping Bosnians, whatever international disasters they brought to our attention tonight. Rutherford folks would give close attention to this calamity, with their beer and peanuts before dinner. Then they would turn the sound down while some senators came on to announce another budget deal, and back up again for the sports and weather.
6
✜
Stearns and Donovan were waiting in the car with the LaPlantes when we drove up to the lab. I realized suddenly that I didn’t want the parents in the room when the mask came off. I hustled over to Stearns’s side of the car and muttered, “Better wait here a minute, I’ll come out and get you, okay?” Stearnsy just nodded without comment, a brick wall in a blue suit.
I caught up to Pokey at the door and asked, “No reason they have to see the body before we get the genitals out of the mouth, right? We can do that right away, can’t we?”
“You betcha. Lessee what they got set up for us here.”
We got first cabin service that morning. Somehow, the word was out that we had the possible makings of a serial-murder case in Rutherford, and the Hampstead County Pathology Lab wanted a piece of the action. We whizzed right in to the biggest examining room, and the head doc himself, Jason Stuart, was waiting to assist Pokey at the autopsy. I’d seen him once or twice before and privately nicknamed him Dr. Quiet. A small man with sparse gray hair and gray eyes behind rimless glasses, he seldom spoke, and almost never smiled. Watching him work was a revelation. He still didn’t say much, but his manner became commanding and intense. Work turned him on.
I asked them to leave the uniform on till the parents had been in, so I could find out if they recognized it. Also, remembering our recent wrestling match with Tammy Wahler, I suggested we keep the chopped wrist covered, and try to get an identification from just the head. Then, beginning to feel like the stage manager of a horror show, I went out and got the LaPlantes.
They didn’t touch or speak, getting out of the car. Coming into the lab, they might have been strangers who had arrived in separate cars. He walked ahead, opening doors for himself, and came to a stop in the middle of the examining room, where he stood silent, gathered into a tight hard knot of dread. She shuffled in after him, shoulders drooping, all her body language insisting, “Feel sorry for me!” She had a hard time getting through the doors we held open for her; she had some resistance to doors. Inside, she shuffled ahead under the blazing lights until she ran up against her husband’s back, where she stopped. Her asthmatic wheezing raised the tension in the room several notches. We all watched her, ready to jump if she collapsed.
When Dr. Stuart lifted the sheet off their son’s face, they turned toward each other at last, wearing expressions of disbelief, and a sort of puzzlement. I’ve seen this reaction before. Once, a grieving brother cried out indignantly, “But….he looks just like always!” People expect some kind of exaltation to take place, a brightness in the expression that says the departed has solved the riddle. But here lay plain old Louie, every inch the barfly and hanger-on, looking scruffy as ever with his pot belly and his three-day stubble. Only now, he was silent and cold and dead.
Mrs. LaPlante began to make little mewing noises. Her husband moved toward her then, weeping, and put his right arm clumsily over her shoulders, like an awkward suitor trying for his first kiss. He looked across her at me, and asked, “He ain’t shot or nothin’, is he? What’d he die from?”
“We don’t really know that yet, Mr. LaPlante,” I said. “These doctors are going to do some tests now to try to find out, and we’ll let you know as soon as we know anything.” Later, I thought, we’ll have to tell them that the body they’re getting ready to bury is coming home one hand short. Shoulda seen what the last guy was short of, Mrs. LaPlante. For a minute, I hated my job.
I took them into the foyer. They were overwhelmed, of course, and unable to think clearly. I got very little information from them. Louie had eaten supper at home and then gone out. He didn’t say where he was going, he usually didn’t.
“Has he ever been married?” I asked, and they both looked up, surprised and slightly shocked, and answered together, “Oh, no–no,” as if family wisdom had decreed, long ago, that Louie was not the marrying kind.
“He worked at the Dairy ever since high school,” his mother said, as if that explained something.
“I see,” I said, and waited, but when she didn’t add anything more I asked her husband, “What did he do there?”
“Worked on the bottler, first, on weekends. Then he got on as a handyman helper after he graduated. And he finally worked up to driving a truck, the last coupla years. He liked that, he did pretty well at it, got his own route.” He sustained a pleased expression for a few seconds, but quickly lapsed into the memory of some long-standing grievance. Squirming and shaking his head, he finally added, “I still had to get him up and see he got to work every morning, though. He stayed just like a little boy that way. His ma looked after his clothes and cooked his meals, all he had to do was get up and go to work, but he never–” He shrugged hopelessly. “Always stayed up half the night is why,” he finished. He and his wife exchanged a look, wordlessly continuing some long-standing argument.
They had no idea what he was doing in that ballplayer’s uniform; he was certainly not wearing it when he left home last night. He had not played on a softball team since high school. His mother described the clothes he had been wearing when she last saw him: Levi’s, a blue T-shirt, a dark green windbreaker. “This ball suit,” as she called it, didn’t seem quite like the one he had worn in school, either. She was pretty sure she remembered that they had passed his school uniform along to a younger cousin when Louie graduated. Maybe she had a picture of Louie in his ball suit. She would look for it…She was shaken, suddenly, by a storm of coughing.
Stearns shook his head at me, then, and Donovan leaned over Mrs. LaPlante and said firmly, “Mrs. LaPlante, why don’t you let me help you back to the car, and we’ll take you home and you can start to think what you want to do? Is there somebody you’d like to call, to come be with you…?” The four of them moved together like a badly organized slinky toy, out the door and down the steps. The dreadful whoop of her coughing seemed to echo in the hall for some time after the door closed.
Back inside, Pokey and Dr. Stuart had stripped off the uniform, and were weighing and measuring the body. Standing just out of their way, I called the station, and was pleased to find Marlys Schultz on the morning support team. Schultzy’s a big, bosomy blond, with five kids and a laugh that rocks the walls. Hidden inside her homey exterior, like a hermit crab in a snail shell, lives an information processor without peer. She’s greased lightening on the computer and a walking compendium of databases, but that’s just the beginning. She keeps a file as long as your arm of city directories, phone books, professional associations and club lists, and romps through them as if they were her personal Rolodexes. You want to find a jewelry maker in Denver with relatives still living in Bolivia? A left-handed orthodontist in Cleveland who rides a palomino? Call Schultzy.
