Home Body, page 25
This time it was a Portland PD ramp truck that had rolled into the parking lot at Roxanne’s building. The ramp-truck driver was a young guy who leapt from the cab as Roxanne’s neighbors watched from their windows. I stood with the cop and watched, too, as the wrecker driver wrote the truck registration number on a form on a clipboard. Roxanne went inside.
“I need to sign anything?” I called to the driver.
“No, sir,” he said. “And everything in the car stays.”
“Cell phone?”
“Everything.”
And then from the cab of the truck, the driver took a pole with hooks on both ends, and used it to pop open my truck door. Leaning in, he pressed the clutch pedal down with one end of the pole, and hooked the shifter with the other. Then he eased his way out, closing the door with the pole, too. The hydraulic rams lowered the ramp, and he hooked a cable to the truck’s rear axle. The motor revved and in the flashing yellow lights, my truck rolled up the ramp, which then tipped back into place. The driver chained the Toyota down, and then the ramp truck and the police car were gone.
The wheels of justice don’t always turn slowly.
45
k
When I came in, Roxanne was already in bed. The light was out, and she was lying on her back. Her eyes were closed but she wasn’t asleep. I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Sorry about all this,” I said.
“It’s okay.”
“Was it difficult?”
“No. It was just late.”
“What did they ask?”
“About you. All kinds of questions about you.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“The truth.”
“Did they believe you?”
Roxanne put her hands over her eyes, ran them down her cheekbones to her chin.
“I don’t know. Who knows? I’m just—”
“Tired,” I said. “I know. I’ll let you sleep.”
“Jack, I’m so tired I feel sick. And I can’t do that. It’s not good for me, for us.”
“I know.”
“I have to be at work at seven.”
“So call in sick.”
“I can’t,” Roxanne said. “Jack, I just need to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said, and I kissed her on the forehead. She gave my hand a squeeze and then closed her eyes. I eased off the bed and left the room and went downstairs.
The house was quiet, but not silent. The refrigerator hummed, and the microwave beeped, telling Roxanne the hot water for her coffee was ready. It had been ready for hours, but the machine beeped patiently, a faithful servant. I turned it off and the kitchen light, too, then the light in the hall. When my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I went from window to window, door to door, turning the locks and peering out into the cold stillness. Nothing moved under the parking lot lights. Nothing showed against the glow of the city, across the harbor. The bridge lights glowed red in the sky like the lights of motionless airplanes. I watched for a few minutes, eyes narrowed, looking for some clue in the blackness, some reason for a girl’s life to end in this lonely way, for a woman to live with such sadness that she would choose death over the son she loved, and who loved her.
A life conceived, two lives extinguished. And the lives gutted and tossed aside seemed to somehow diminish the value of the one life we’d created. If those lives were cheapened, so was this one. If no explanation were offered, all of our lives were made cheaper still. If the explanation involved me, my baby would be sullied. And I wanted its slate to be oh so dean.
So I stood and watched. Waited, but no clue appeared. Nothing showed, except the lights and their reflections on the black, beguiling water. I considered going out, looking for Rocky, but I’d done that, and even with him in hand, had come up empty. It was time to move ten feet and dig a new hole. I turned away from the window and walked to Roxanne’s desk and fumbled for the button in the dark.
I found it.
The computer turned on.
It burped and whirred and clicked, and the screen glowed blue. I sat there in its wash and half-grudgingly clicked on the little pictures.
I went to a people-finder site, typed and hit the enter key, and the machine did its thing. Sitting in the blue haze, I waited while the machine rounded them up.
Sandra Bakers. Three hundred and ninety-one of them.
Downey, California. Delray Beach, Florida. Sun City, Arizona. Newport, Vermont. St. Paul, Minnesota, and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. I scrolled through quickly and the Sandra Bakers marched across the screen. There were dozens of Sandra L. Bakers, even more listed under Sandra M.
If my Sandra Baker had left the state, this would be no help at all.
But odds were that she had stayed, so I narrowed my search to Maine. The computer scuttled here and there and rounded up only three Sandra Bakers with Maine phone listings. None lived in the Somerset County town of Scanesett, or in Somerset County at all. One was in Searsport, southeast of Bangor, another in South Portland. The third was in Eastport, way downeast. That did not include Sandra Bakers who didn’t have phones in their names, or didn’t have phones at all, or lived with their daughters and sons-in-law. Or Sandra Bakers who were listed under the initial S. Or had married or remarried. Or who were dead.
Always a possibility.
Sitting there in the quiet, I searched for S. Bakers in Maine. There were five, scattered from Ellsworth to Auburn, none in Scanesett. I started to reach for the phone, but then remembered it was one in the morning. I put the phone back down. It was just the computer and me. I put it to work.
Getting my date book from the counter, I dug out the microfilm page with the hit-and-run and double-checked the first name of the investigator, a David Turgeon. I’d never heard of him, so I ran him, too, and got the scattered list. Forty-three of them around the country, four in Maine. If he was a detective in 1987, there was a good chance he was retired. There were five David Turgeons in Florida, including one in Pompano and another in St. Augustine.
Or he could be patrolling in Aroostook County. I’d find him in the morning.
It promised to be a day’s work, but no more. At the Times, I’d once done a story revisiting the relatives of victims of a serial killer ten to fifteen years after the murders. Some were easily found, just by opening the phone book. Some took calls to other relatives, neighbors, phone operators, town offices, and tax assessors. As long as each encounter yielded a single new clue, the trail meandered on and the person eventually could be located. Even in the vast reaches of the country, even in the teeming cities, it is very hard to truly disappear.
If Sandra Baker was alive, I’d find her. I’d find her if she wasn’t.
I shut down the whirring machine, with its blue Cyclops eye, and made one more round of the perimeter, as Clair would have called it. Portland was a city that, unlike many, actually slept, and the harbor was black, the skyline dimmed. Roxanne’s neighbors were snug in their beds, resting, so that in the morning they could once more sally forth to earn their mortgage payments. I padded quietly up the stairs and went into the bedroom, pausing to look once more from the darkened window. As I watched, a car turned in from the road and coasted through the lot.
It was an unmarked cruiser. As it slowed behind Roxanne’s car, I could see the head turn in the driver’s seat. They were looking for Rocky, and making sure they didn’t lose me.
There was no chance.
I fell asleep with my arm draped protectively over Roxanne, my face against her hair. I awoke to the sound of her hair dryer in the bathroom. It still was dark, a blue-black dawn. The bathroom door opened and the light spilled out and I squinted as she came over. She was wearing a wool skirt and dark tights and a big sweater.
“Is that one of those maternity outfits?” I said.
“Jack, I’ve had this sweater all winter.”
“Oh. It looks different.”
“You look at it differently.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m glad you do.”
Roxanne leaned over and kissed my forehead.
“But I’ve got to go.”
“What time is it?”
“Six-thirty.”
“What do you have to do? Make the doughnuts?”
“Get my act together for today.”
“At six-thirty?”
Roxanne hesitated.
“While you were gone last night, I got a call from the district manager. I’ve got to meet with him at seven.”
“About what?”
She paused again.
“Well . . .”
“About Rocky? About me?”
“It’s nothing. He just needs to know what’s going on. I guess he got a call from the police last night.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You need me?”
“No, it’s nothing,” Roxanne said. “Routine.”
But there was an edge of apprehension in her voice.
“I thought we might talk,” I said. “You know, about things. Like, I haven’t told anyone about the, well, the—”
“Baby.”
“Right. The baby.”
“And you want to see Clair and Mary.”
“I don’t know. Don’t you? It’s a big deal. But you can’t come up?”
“Not until Saturday.”
“I’ll come back.”
“You don’t have to,” Roxanne said.
“I know, but I will anyway. Late. I’ve got to be at work at three, but I don’t think I’ll be late. Something tells me they may not need me.”
“How are you going to get there?”
I’d forgotten.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll rent something. You think insurance covers a rental when the police take your car in connection with a murder investigation?”
Roxanne didn’t laugh.
“Are you going to talk to those detectives again?”
“I’m sure. I want to know if they found him. And they want a blood test, and they said something about a polygraph.”
“Jack—”
“It’s nothing. Routine, as long as you’re not lying.”
She kissed me again.
“You’ve never lied in your life,” Roxanne said.
“Just a few white ones,” I said. “But not to you. You know, I’d rather you weren’t alone tonight.”
“I’ll lock the doors.”
“Leave the outside lights on.”
“Okay.”
“Have somebody over.”
“I just want to have you over.”
“I know, but I’d feel better if somebody else were here earlier. How ’bout Skip next door?”
“He’s in St. John, the Virgin Islands. He and his new flame, this stockbroker guy named George. They chartered a boat.”
Roxanne squeezed my hand.
“Jack, I’ve seen worse than Rocky and his father.”
“Maybe not the worst of them.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“I know you are. But now—”
“Worrying for two, Jack McMorrow?”
“Yes,” I said. “‘I am.”
“And I love you for it,” Roxanne said. “But I’ll be fine.”
I stayed in bed and listened. The almost musical tap of her heels on the floors. The door opening and closing. The sound of the Explorer starting, and the sound of her scraper on the iced-over windshield. The motor revving, then the car crunching on the ice, and Roxanne fading into the distance.
I was alone, a chronic condition.
After a minute, I got up and showered and shaved, and looked at my tooth in the mirror. It seemed to be turning gray, but I told myself it was the bathroom light. White lie number one. After toast and tea, I called the car rental place at the Portland Jetport and asked if they would deliver a car to me. The young woman on the phone said they didn’t do that, so I said I had to be in court in Bangor. Still no dice. I hung up and called a cab. At the cab company, another woman told me it would be a half-hour. I told her I was in no hurry; it was just the typical American male’s innate fear of being without a motor vehicle. She said it would be an hour. I said actually even ten o’clock would be fine. She said that would be finer.
So with the taxi scheduled, I went to work. It was too early to start on Sandra Bakers, so I called Tippy Danforth, who’d be out cleaning the pens. The tape began to play, but then she picked up. I said hello.
“Oh,” she said, as though not sure how to react.
“I’m sorry about everything.”
“Well, I am, too. Terribly sorry. It’s—”
She caught herself again, and I knew. She wasn’t sure how much she could say, wasn’t sure exactly what I was. Copy editor or pervert? Good Samaritan or psychopath? It made a difference.
“You’ve talked to the police, I assume,” I said.
“Well . . .”
“Whatever. I’m just calling to say I’m sorry that you got involved, with Tammy and all this. I was just trying to help her, and you were, too. And it’s all gone to hell.”
“Yes, it has,” Tippy said.
“And this is the other thing. Rocky, I’m not so sure you should be around him. If he comes back, I mean. He was here last night—I’m in Portland—and he was acting pretty strange, and then he took off again. I don’t know if the cops have picked him up, but if he turns up at your place, or in Bangor at all, I’d just call Bangor PD.”
“I certainly will do that.” Her voice had softened.
“So I guess that’s about it. I don’t know. That, and maybe what Tammy said. I saw her yesterday on the street, and we talked, and she told me how much she liked being at your house and working for you. She said she was going back to see kittens born. She said you were going to give her one to keep. She was happy about that.”
“That’s true. I told her she could keep it here. I didn’t want her carting it around on the streets. The boy, too.”
“The boy too, what?”
“I said he could have one.”
“A cat?”
“A kitten,” Tippy said. “These kids are so alone. You know, I think they just need a companion that doesn’t question them, interrogate them. Something that will just love them.”
“That could be.”
“But you’re right about him behaving strangely. Because when I said he could have one of the litter, too, his reaction was quite odd, really.”
“What did he do?”
“Well, I just said, ‘How would you like a kitten?,’ and he just stopped talking, just withdrew. Never said another word in my presence, and, of course, when I got up he was gone.”
“That’s all you said?”
“Yes. Do you think I offended him? I’m not around children, so I don’t know quite how they think. Not like I know cats and dogs. Maybe he thought I was treating him like a baby or something. But that’s just the way I refer to them.”
“To whom?”
“To the cats. I call them my kitties. I said, ‘You can have a kitty, too.’ ”
“Kitty, as in Katia?” I said, half to myself.
“What?” Tippy said.
“Nothing,” I said. “If you see him, or his stepfather, call the police. Call me, too.”
Tippy may have hung up puzzled, but I didn’t. It was almost eight o’clock; I made another cup of tea, and with barely a glance at the harbor skyline, went to the desk and picked up the phone book. I opened the inside of the front cover and went down the list of emergency numbers. This wasn’t one, but there was a business listing for the Maine State Police in Augusta. I dialed. Waited.
A man answered, and I asked for Detective Turgeon. He said there was no detective by that name with the Maine State Police; could somebody else help me? I said I wasn’t sure, but had Detective Turgeon retired? He said he didn’t know, but he’d check.
He put me on hold. I waited, and he came back. He said Detective Turgeon retired some time ago. I asked where Turgeon was now and he said he had no idea, as though the detective had been lost at sea. And then I asked, as he was about to hang up, whether a ten-year-old death, a hit-and-run, would still be under investigation.
He said it would be active until it was solved. I asked if it would be on the bottom of somebody’s case list. He said all active cases are under investigation, but some may not get daily attention. In other words, when David Turgeon packed up his desk, the case of Katia Poulin went with him.
So I took my Turgeon list and started calling. In Orland, Maine, on the coast, I found a David Turgeon who had been sleeping until the phone rang. I asked for David Turgeon, the former police detective, and this David Turgeon said he worked nights at a supermarket. Before I could apologize, he hung up. A David Turgeon in Kennebunk, Maine, had left an answering machine message in which a lisping toddler said, “Dave and Jessica and Chelsea and Matthew aren’t home. Oh, yeah. Leave a message after the beep-beep.”
I didn’t. Instead, for some reason, I moved directly to St. Augustine, where a woman answered.
I made my pitch. She asked who I was. I told her and asked if I had the right place.
“Well, yes and no,” the woman said.
All right, I said to myself, pumping my fist.
“Yes and no?” I said.
“Yes, my husband was a detective with the Maine State Police.”
“Could I speak with him?”
“You’re going to need a mighty long phone line,” the woman said. “Mr. Turgeon passed away in 1994.”
I said I was sorry. She said she was, too, and sorry she couldn’t help me, but if I would excuse her—
“Not to keep you, but did your husband ever talk about a hit-and-run case? A woman killed in Newport? I don’t believe it was ever solved.”
In the movies this would be the serendipitous moment. Some cases he put behind him, but that hit-and-run case gnawed at him, she would say. He went to his grave hoping the perpetrator would come to justice.
