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Armentrout rubbed the back of his neck with a beefy hand. His eyes were a little bloodshot. “I walked around to check. I thought somebody’d passed out or something, and maybe needed medical attention. I didn’t realized the guy was dead until I saw the blood.”
“How’d you know he was dead?”
Armentrout gave Policzki a long, level look. “I wasn’t born yesterday. It was pretty obvious.”
Fair enough. “What did you do when you realized he was dead?”
“I got the hell out. If there was a killer on the premises, I wasn’t about to hang around and wait to become his next victim. I hightailed it out of there and called 911 from the park across the street. I waited there until the cops arrived.”
“All right. Did you, at any time, touch anything?”
“Just the doorknob.”
“Were you acquainted with the victim? Was he anybody you’d met before?”
Armentrout shook his head. “I figured he was one of Kaye Winslow’s associates. I don’t know who the hell he is. Maybe she can tell you.”
She probably could, Policzki thought, if they could just locate her. “All right, Mr. Armentrout,” he said, “I think we’re done. I’ll need verification of your whereabouts earlier this afternoon, and a number where I can reach you in case I have more questions.”
“Verification of my—what the hell, am I a suspect?”
“It’s routine, sir. You’re the person who found the body. In the absence of a smoking gun or a signed confession, we have to consider you a suspect until we can rule you out. Hopefully that’ll happen sooner rather than later.”
“I don’t believe this.” Armentrout fished in his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a business card and shoved it into Policzki’s hand. “I go out to look at a house and end up in the middle of a mess like this. My whole goddamn afternoon’s been screwed up. You’d better believe I’ll be crossing this mausoleum off my list of possibilities.” Glowering, he slid the wallet back into his pocket. “Matter of fact, I wouldn’t buy a house in Boston if somebody paid me to take it off their hands. Not after this insanity. Maybe I’ll find something in Newton or Andover. I hear Lexington’s nice.”
He left in a huff, this short, self-important businessman whose schedule had been hopelessly derailed by his discovery of a dead body. Hell of an inconvenience, Policzki thought as he watched him go. A real shame that murder had disrupted the guy’s busy day.
The door slammed shut behind Armentrout. Across the room, O’Connell, the forensics tech, closed up his fingerprint kit. “That went well,” he said.
“Right,” Policzki said. “He didn’t pull a weapon on me, or threaten to have me fired, so I guess in the greater scheme of things, it could have been worse.”
“Oh, yeah. It could’ve been a lot worse.” O’Connell nodded in the direction of the black plastic bag the two EMTs were wheeling toward the front door. “You could’ve been that guy.”
The setting sun poured like honey through the closed windows of the lecture hall, infusing it with the ambience of a sauna. The dog days of summer were a thing of the past, but so was the air-conditioning that had rendered them tolerable. Cheap construction, minimal insulation and a simpleminded administration that insisted the heating system be turned on according to the calendar instead of the thermometer all conspired to ensure that learning take place in the most hostile environment imaginable. In the midst of this tropical paradise, Assistant Professor Sam Winslow sat reading the latest Dan Brown paperback while his art history students waded through the first exam of the semester. Fifty-eight heads leaned over fifty-eight blue books as fifty-eight pens scratched diligently against paper.
Sam had come to this job six years ago with the zealous idealism of a new convert. It had taken him awhile to accept the irrefutable truth that ninety-eight point eight percent of his students simply didn’t give a shit. Back Bay Community College wasn’t the kind of place that bred art majors. His classes were well attended because everybody who graduated from BBCC needed nine hours of humanities credit. They’d heard that Professor Winslow was an easy grader, and how hard, after all, could art history be? With a few notable exceptions—primarily those few students who signed up each semester for his introductory painting class—his students were here for one reason only: the three credits that would magically appear on their transcripts if they paid attention in class, showed up on exam days and regurgitated his words back to him in some kind of meaningful form.
This was what his life had come to: he trafficked in regurgitation. Not a particularly pretty realization, especially at four forty-five on a sticky Indian summer afternoon when the only thing he’d eaten since breakfast was a couple of purple Peeps that had been left to petrify on the table in the faculty lounge. Judging by their cardboard consistency, they’d been there for a while.
At a soft rap on the door, Sam glanced up from his book and saw the face of Lydia Forbes, Dean of Arts and Sciences and his immediate supervisor, framed in the tiny window. Setting down his book, he got up from his chair, crossed the room and, with a slow sweep of his gaze over the classroom—his students were supposed to be adults, but it didn’t hurt to give them the impression that he had eyes in the back of his head—he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
“Lydia,” he said, leaving the door open just a crack behind him.
“Sorry to interrupt, but you didn’t look busy.” Six feet tall in her conservative two-inch heels, Lydia met him nearly eye to eye. Thin almost to the point of emaciation, she wore a brown tweed suit, her gray hair pulled back in its customary severe chignon. Eyebrows that were a dark slash in her pale face gave her a look of perpetual surprise. The first time he’d met her, he’d thought she looked just like Miss Grundy, the schoolteacher from the Archie comics. It hadn’t taken him long to see that the outer package was merely professional camouflage for a woman with an infectious laugh, a bawdy sense of humor and a relentless addiction to unfiltered cigarettes. “Take a walk with me,” she said.
He glanced back at the classroom. Reading the uncertainty in his gaze, she said, “For Christ’s sake, Sam, pull that big stick out of your ass. They’re adults. Let them be responsible for their own actions.”
Sam latched the classroom door and fell into step with her, matching her leggy stride along the silent corridor and out into the crisp October afternoon. The sun’s rays, angling between brick buildings, bathed the entire scene in a muted pink glow. Lydia walked two steps from the entryway, fired up a Pall Mall and took a drag. Eyes closed in ecstasy, she exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and said without rancor, “Damn idiotic state laws.”
Behind her back, Sam discreetly waved away the smoke. She took another drag and said, “I forwarded your tenure application to the committee yesterday.”
Moving upwind of the toxic blue cloud, he took a breath of fresh air. Or as fresh as it got on a weekday in downtown Boston. “And?”
She turned and studied him with shrewd blue eyes. Took another puff and said, “I’m worried about Larsen.”
Professor Nyles Larsen was Sam Winslow’s nemesis. He was also the chair of the tenure committee. In theory, if a professor didn’t achieve tenure, there was nothing forcing him to move on. In reality, being denied was a slap in the face, best responded to by making a rapid retreat with tail tucked firmly between legs. There was just one problem with that: Sam didn’t want to retreat. He might have come to teaching by a circuitous route, but now that he was here, he had no intention of going anywhere.
Sam furrowed his brow. “You think he’ll give us trouble?”
“I think Nyles Larsen would take great glee in denying your tenure application. He’s had it in for you since the day you first walked through the door of this place.”
It was true. Larsen had been a member of the search committee that had hired Sam, and when the man had taken an immediate dislike to him, he’d come close to losing out to another candidate. If not for the staunch ally he’d made in Vince Tedeschi, Professor of Mathematics, he’d have ended up standing on a street corner, selling pencils from a cup. Fortunately for Sam, majority vote had ruled the day, but Nyles Larsen continued to wage a one-man campaign against what he claimed were Sam’s mediocre standards and slapdash teaching methods.
“He’s jealous,” Lydia said. “Your students think you walk on water. Nyles puts his students to sleep.”
A pair of twenty-something young women carrying backpacks passed them, talking animatedly, and entered the building through the wide double doors. “So how do we counteract his influence?” Sam said.
“We’ve done as much as we can do,” Lydia said. “I’ve read your materials all the way through. Proofed them twice. Just to be sure. Your tenure packet’s thorough. You’ve provided good documentation. Your student evaluations are top-notch. Your publication record is a little thin, but it’s outweighed by other factors, like your outstanding committee work. Your peer recommendation was stellar.”
Of course it was. If not for him, it would have been his peers sitting on all those mind-numbingly tedious committees. They’d do whatever it took to keep him on board so they could continue nominating him to do the dirty work they were all so desperate to avoid. He figured it was worth the sacrifice. No matter what he was asked to do, he accepted the job with a smile. Damn little ever got accomplished in those committee meetings, but membership always looked good on paper.
“Christ, Lyd,” he said, hating the thread of desperation that ran through his voice, “I have to get tenure. If I can’t make it in this place…” The rest of the sentence went unspoken, but they both knew what he meant. When you started at the bottom, there was nowhere left to fall. “I can’t make a living from painting. And I’m not trained for anything else. If they boot me out of Back Bay, I’ll end up waxing floors at the bus station.”
Lydia took another puff of her cigarette, held in the smoke and exhaled it. Flicking an ash, she said, “You’ve done everything we asked you to do. There’s no reason on God’s green earth why you should be turned down. Not unless Larsen starts flapping his gums, and even then, the rest of the committee should ignore him. The man is irrational, and everybody knows it. They also know he’s determined to hang you out to dry. If anything goes wrong at this point, I’m holding Nyles Larsen personally responsible. If that happens, the little weasel won’t want to cross my path.”
The lowering sun slowly leached the afternoon of its warmth. Just beneath the surface of that golden glow lay October’s surprisingly sharp little teeth, nipping unexpectedly when a sudden arctic gust caught and lifted a strand of Sam’s hair.
“I appreciate the support,” he said. “I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me a thing. I just wanted to give you a heads-up.” She dropped the butt of her cigarette onto the ground and crushed it out with her foot. “And to let you know that I’m watching your back.”
Detective Lorna Abrams had a headache.
She fumbled in her black leather purse for the emergency bottle of Tylenol she always carried, opened the bottle and popped two capsules into her palm. Snapping the cap back on the bottle, she glanced around the interior of the car for something liquid, then said, “To hell with it!” and swallowed them dry.
Policzki, his hands at ten and two on the wheel and his eyes focused on traffic to prevent them from becoming yet another highway statistic, said, “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Easy. I just work up a mouthful of spit and—”
“Thanks,” he said, “but you really don’t have to go into detail.”
“Stop being so spleeny. You’re a cop, for Christ’s sake. Act like one.”
Policzki didn’t respond. It was just as well. When she was in this kind of mood, heads were likely to roll, and Doug Policzki’s head, being the nearest one, was in danger of becoming her first victim.
None of the three telephone numbers listed on Kaye Winslow’s business card had yielded results. The first, her cell phone number, was useless because in the abruptness of her departure, Winslow had left her BlackBerry behind. The second, her private line at Winslow & DeLucca, rang twice and then went directly to voice mail. Lorna had left an urgent message, but the chances of getting a response were probably zip and zilch. That left door number three. But by the time they’d finished up at the scene, it was well past closing time, and the realty office answering machine had directed her to call back after eight o’clock in the morning.
“Three strikes and you’re out,” she muttered.
Policzki glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Having a bad day, are we?”
“They postponed the court date on the Moldonado case. Again.”
Arturo Moldonado, a soft-spoken supermarket meat cutter who’d lived in the same East Boston apartment for two decades, was known for taking in strays—both the human and the animal variety—and handing out penny candy to the neighborhood kids. One day last October, he’d come home early and discovered his wife in bed with a twenty-two-year-old college dropout friend of their son. Upon seeing his inamorata engaged in steamy passion with another, much younger and more virile man, Moldonado had tiptoed to the kitchen and taken out a meat cleaver—which, in consideration of his occupation, he kept razor sharp—then returned to the bedroom and the still unsuspecting couple, and proceeded to hack them into a jillion pieces. Afterward, he’d called 911, then sat calmly on the couch with the bloody cleaver and waited for the authorities to come and take him away.
“You can’t control the court calendar,” Policzki said. “They’ll do what they’re going to do. All we can do is roll with it.”
His logic was flawless. And maddening. “That isn’t even the worst of it,” Lorna said, rubbing at her throbbing temple. “It’s those crazy people I call relatives that have me one step from the edge and peering down into the abyss.”
“Oh,” he said as the light dawned. “Wedding stuff.”
“Yes, wedding stuff! You know what I did today? I spent my lunch hour watching my nineteen-year-old daughter try on wedding dresses. Do you have any frigging idea how much those things cost?”
Policzki made a noncommittal grunt of sympathy. Of course he was noncommittal, she thought irritably. He didn’t have a clue how much wedding dresses cost. He lived at home with his mother and banked all his money. “Too damn much,” she said, answering her own question. “That’s how much. All for a kid who has her head in the clouds and doesn’t have a clue what life is really about.”
And that was the crux of the matter: Krissy was too young to get married. She was nineteen years old, barely out of high school. A baby. She was also headstrong and determined, so the wedding preparations rolled merrily along, gathering momentum and gaining in size, until they threatened to crush anybody who failed to jump out of the way.
“Silk and taffeta,” Lorna grumbled. “Tulle and organza. What the hell is organza, anyway?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
She glanced out the window, down a darkened side street. “Ed and I got married at city hall. I wore a navy-blue suit and carried a bouquet of carnations. We spent our wedding night at a hotel in Revere, then got up and went to work the next day. We did not—I repeat not—spend two weeks on Maui. Who the hell was the idiot that decided the bride’s parents are supposed to pay for the wedding?”
“The tradition dates back to ancient times,” Policzki said, “when the bride’s family was expected to provide a dowry to the family of the groom, presumably in payment for taking her off their hands.”
Lorna snorted. “If I’d known that was all it took, I’d have gladly paid Derek to take her off my hands. He’s welcome to all of her—the nose ring, the messy room, the Real World addiction. The posters of Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. He’s an easygoing kid. I could’ve paid him off for a tenth of what this wedding will cost me. They could’ve eloped. Think of the money I would have saved.”
“I think this is it.” Policzki pulled up to the curb behind an aging Volvo wagon. Soft light spilled through a bay window of the South End town house onto the shrubbery below, giving the place the cozy, inviting look of a Thomas Kinkade painting. A shadow moved behind a curtained window. Policzki turned off the engine, and by silent agreement, they simultaneously opened their doors and stepped out of the car.
The day’s warmth had given way to a crisp, clear evening. As they moved briskly toward the front door of the house, Lorna said, “So I’ll be good cop and you can be bad cop.”
“How come I never get to be good cop?”
“Are you kidding, Policzki? With that grim expression of yours, you’d scare people half to death. Tell me. Do you take the face off when you go to bed at night, or is this a 24–7 kind of thing?”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I love babies and flowers and puppies.”
“I know. You’re just incredibly earnest. Or incredibly dedicated. Or incredibly something.”
They climbed the steps and Lorna rang the bell. Muffled footsteps approached and the door opened.
Lorna’s first thought was that Sam Winslow—if, indeed, the man standing in the open doorway, outlined by soft lamplight, was Sam Winslow—was a sinfully handsome man, with coal-black hair worn to his shoulders, electric blue eyes and a lean, craggy face topped by cheekbones sharp enough to slice diamonds. Somewhere in the vicinity of forty, if the wisps of gray at his temples were any indication, he could be a model—or a stand-in for George Clooney—if he ever tired of teaching. She could imagine him in a magazine layout, standing in a room full of glamorous and playful people, wearing Armani and sipping from a glass of Chivas Regal.
Christ on a crutch. His female students must be tripping over their own feet just to get close to him. Probably a few of the male ones were, too.
He eyed them warily. “Yes?”
“Sam Winslow?” Policzki said.
“Yes.”
The young detective held up his badge. “Policzki and Abrams, Boston PD. Is your wife home, sir?”
“My wife? I—no, actually, she’s not. What’s this about?”
“May we come in?”
“It’s dinnertime. I really don’t think—”
“Professor Winslow,” Lorna said, “there was an incident this afternoon involving your wife. I think you’d better let us in.”
“An incident?” He hesitated, looked momentarily nonplussed. Then he nodded and moved away from the door.
Winslow closed the door behind them, cleared his throat and ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. “What’s this about?” he repeated.
“Professor Winslow,” Lorna said, “when was the last time you spoke with your wife?”
“This morning,” he said. “We had breakfast together. Then she went her way and I went mine. You still haven’t told me what’s going on. What kind of incident?”
“It’s almost seven o’clock,” Policzki said. “Your wife isn’t home, and you haven’t spoken to her since this morning. Is this your typical daily routine?”
“Kaye works crazy hours. Look, I wish you people would tell me what the hell is going on. Is Kaye in some kind of trouble? Has something happened to her?”
“Your wife had an appointment this afternoon to show a house on Commonwealth Avenue,” Lorna said, watching his eyes carefully for even the merest flicker of recognition. Or guilt. But she saw neither. “When the client arrived, Mrs. Winslow wasn’t there.”
Winslow wrinkled his brow in puzzlement and ran a hand along his jaw. “I don’t understand. You mean she never showed up?”
“Oh, she showed up,” Policzki said. “Her briefcase was there. Her PDA and her wallet were there. But no Kaye. We did find somebody else there, though.”
Winslow crossed his arms. “Who?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Lorna said. “Whoever he was, he’d been shot in the head. Does your wife own a gun, Professor?”
Two
Winslow’s color wasn’t good. He sat on a cream leather sofa, directly across from Lorna, who’d snagged herself a comfy armchair, while Policzki wandered the room, taking a casual inventory of its contents. The professor had loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, but to Policzki he still looked like something that should be hung out to dry on a wash day morning. His pallor might be due to the shock of learning that his wife was missing. On the other hand, it could be traced to a more sinister source. Guilt had a way of taking its toll on a man.
“The very suggestion is ludicrous,” Winslow said.
Lorna leaned back in her chair. “Why is it ludicrous?”
“A, we don’t own a gun. And B, even if we did, there’s not a chance in hell that Kaye would ever shoot it. She’d be too worried about breaking a nail or getting her hands dirty.”
His ears attuned to every nuance of their conversation, Policzki studied the collection of African tribal masks that hung on the wall above the fireplace mantel. They looked like the genuine article. Somebody—presumably the good professor—had done a good deal more traveling in his lifetime than had Douglas Policzki of Somerville, Massachusetts. Six semesters spent at an Arizona university was hardly in the same league as a trip to the Dark Continent.
The Winslows had eclectic tastes. An antique open-fronted china cabinet housed a large collection of Hummel figurines. At least the Winslows kept them all in one place. Policzki’s mother collected Hummels, and she had dozens of them scattered all over the house, an excess of cuteness so saccharine it made his teeth ache.
“My wife did not kill anybody,” Winslow said. “There has to be some other explanation. Have you talked to the owner of the building? Maybe this dead guy is one of the Worthingtons.”
