Part 3 (1/2)
He spooned up his chowder. He spooned it away from him, the way you are supposed to do it, the way n.o.body does. ”So,” he said, taking his napkin from his lap and dabbing his mouth, ”a college girl's body is found on a golf course in Osterville, the local police are programmed to think, well, she must have been murdered by somebody from Mashpee, Yarmouth, Truro, anyplace but here.”
”And you don't believe that's what happened to your daughter?”
”No, Mr. Becket, I don't.” He ate some more, sparing me any slurping sounds. I found myself liking Bill Telford just for the way he approached his chowder.
”My daughter was an exceptionally pretty girl. A bright girl. Size you up in a jiffy. She was going to Wheaton College. Do you know it? Didn't know anything about it myself until they came and got her. But it's a wonderful inst.i.tution, and they recruited her right out of Barnstable High on her guidance counselor's recommendation. Didn't give her quite a full scholars.h.i.+p, but made it possible on my salary. I was an insurance adjuster, Mr. Becket. My job was to go out and a.s.sess damage, mostly on homeowners' claims. I'd go into some of these multimillion-dollar properties here in Osterville, do my work, then I'd say to the homeowners, these people who had done so well in life, what can you tell me about Wheaton College? To a person they said good things. They were all familiar with it, all had somebody in the family or knew somebody who had gone there, so I said, that's it. Whatever it takes, my daughter's gonna go there.”
All I had done was ask him whether he believed his daughter had been killed by someone from outside Osterville. I wasn't going to ask anything more for fear he would start telling me where he bought his clothes, ga.s.sed his car, went to the grocery store.
”Point is,” he continued, not caring that I wasn't asking, ”Heidi was meeting her share of rich and successful people at Wheaton. Maybe not famous people, I don't know, but she had learned how to handle some of these kids who had a lot more than she did. Went to mixers at Brown, dated boys from Harvard. So I don't see her as being overly impressed by somebody just because he came from a famous family.”
Heidi Telford died when I was still in law school. Her death was old news by the time I started in the Cape & Islands district attorney's office. All this talk about Heidi and her dates and famous families meant nothing to me. I tried to make that clear by sc.r.a.ping the bottom and sides of my cup for the last bits of chowder. Then I started casting my eyes about for John.
”Being an insurance adjuster gave me the opportunity to do some investigating on my own, Mr. Becket. Or at least gave me some of the skills I needed to do it. And whenever I came up with anything, I'd bring it right to District Attorney White. I expect you know all that.”
Now I had to answer. He was waiting, looking right at me, seeing that I was not watching the game anymore, that until the rest of my food came I didn't have anything to do except listen. ”I really haven't been involved, Mr. Telford.”
”Nice fella, Mitch.e.l.l. Takes what I give him, tells me he'll have someone look into it. I never hear anything more.”
”Maybe because he doesn't have anything to tell you.”
”Except I'm telling him things. I talk with Heidi's friends, with her friends' friends, and even friends of those friends, and whenever anybody says anything, no matter how small, I write it down, pa.s.s it along. Then I follow up. Ninety percent of the time I find that the people whose names I pa.s.s along never hear word one from the police or anybody else.”
”Mr. Telford, why are you telling me all this?”
He put his spoon down. He wiped his lips one more time. He fixed a pair of blue-gray eyes on me. ”Because, Mr. Becket, I been hearing good things about you.”
”Like what?”
”Like you're a straight shooter. Don't appear to be obligated to anyone or anything but the truth. You see something that's not a crime, you stand right up to your boss or the police chief or whoever says it is and tell 'em so. You see something that is a crime, you go after it.”
I choked on my Manhattan.
Mr. Telford's eyes narrowed with concern. ”You want some water?”
John never gave me water because I never drank it. I started hacking, trying to clear an air pa.s.sage. John came running from somewhere. So did one of the waitresses. Somebody was pounding me on the back. It took a few seconds to realize it was Mr. Telford.
”I'm okay,” I gasped. ”Something just went down the wrong way.”
John and the waitress, whose name was Fiona, both glared at Mr. Telford as if my travail was his fault. I had to tell everyone all over again that I was all right.
When we were left alone at last, when John had gone back into the kitchen to get my dinner and Fiona had wandered off to do whatever she had to do, I said to Mr. Telford, ”Look, I don't know where you're getting your information from, but I'm just an a.s.sistant D.A. I'm not even a first a.s.sistant. I'm a.s.signed cases, I work on those, and that's all I do.”
”I heard you backed down Chief DiMasi. I heard he wanted to prosecute some colored boys for running a bicycle-theft ring and you said no.”
”First of all, they were from the Cape Verde Islands, those kids. Second, they were stealing bikes, but it wasn't anything so sophisticated as a ring. They were just stealing them and selling them. And third, I did prosecute them inasmuch as I got them to plead to misdemeanors.”
”And sent to a diversionary program.”
I shrugged.
”When the chief wanted them sent to prison as felons.”
”The chief can be aggressive sometimes.”
”About teenagers with no connections stealing bicycles.”
He was not far off the mark. But he was also just a guy sitting next to me in a restaurant. I was glad when John came out and put my plate in front of me. I was even more glad when Mr. Telford picked up the check John had put in front of him and took out his wallet.
”All I'm asking,” he said, as he got to his feet, ”is if maybe you could do some checking yourself. See if these little things I'm givin' District Attorney White are going anywhere other than the circular file.” He put a five-dollar bill down on the bar, then looked at the check again, then selected two more dollars to put on top of it.
”You see, sometimes”-he hesitated, his hand covering the money as though he were holding his place until he got the phrasing just right-”sometimes I'm afraid Mitch.e.l.l may not want the information I'm giving him. Sometimes I wonder if Mitch.e.l.l isn't a little too close to some of our better-known residents.”
”Meaning anybody in particular?”
”Meaning the Gregory family, Mr. Becket. Very much in particular.”
EVEN NOW THERE ARE TIMES I LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT, UNABLE to sleep, playing and replaying the events of that distant night in Palm Beach, thinking about how the lives of so many people were ruined by what took place in a period of no more than one hour, imagining what might have occurred if only I had acted differently. What would have happened if I had pulled Peter off her? Knocked Jamie away? Tried to raise Kendrick to her feet, shake her out of her stupor?
Was she in a stupor? She had not said anything. She had made noises. They had sounded like ... moans. Is that what they were? And if they were moans, were they indications of pleasure or the fact that she could not formulate words?
She had formulated words later. ”f.u.c.k you,” she had said. ”f.u.c.k off,” she had told me. And she had driven that car. Without her shoes. Without a purse. When young women go to a c.o.c.ktail party at a place like the Gregorys', don't they bring purses? If she had left it there, wouldn't the Gregorys have found it? Somebody in the Gregory family had to have known who she was. Somebody had invited her.
I get lost sometimes, conjuring up things I do not know, or that I know only in part. And then I can't get to sleep at all. I lie there until the sun comes up, not sure if I am remembering things as they actually happened or if I am just remembering what I imagined on other nights that I have lain here like this.
And now Bill ”Anything New” Telford tells me what a straight shooter I am, how I am not obligated to anyone or anything but the truth, how I see a crime and go after it. Stand right up to the people in power.
Poor Bill Telford.
LIKE ME, MITCH WHITE WAS NOT FROM THE AREA. THAT SHOULD have been a point to bond us, outsiders in a provincial legal setting in which many of the regular players could trace their local roots back for generations. In fact, it only made District Attorney White highly suspicious of me. He knew how I had gotten my job.
The same way he had.
In the ten or so years Mitch had been D.A., he had tried hard to adapt to the culture. He had the requisite sports memorabilia around his office, but one had the sense he could not withstand a grilling about Bobby Orr, Carl Yastrzemski, or maybe even Larry Bird. He bought a table for the Boston Pops concert that was held on the town green every summer, but people who were forced to sit with him reported he never seemed interested in the music and spent most of the time scanning the other tables for celebrities, officials, and people to whom he could wave. He did not have a boat, did not golf or fish, did not seem to care about the beach.
Among the things Mitch had clearly never mastered was the art of dressing like a native. He was p.r.o.ne to short-sleeved dress s.h.i.+rts, even when he wore a tie. In the summer he liked to wear seersucker suits that could not have cost him $200 and tended to show both wrinkles and the damp spots of perspiration that came from sitting in a leather chair. He had a mustache that no doubt was meant to distract viewers from his underslung chin and wore dark-framed gla.s.ses in which the lenses were fitted into frames shaped liked oxbows. His arms, sticking out of his short sleeves, were remarkably thin. On his left hand he wore a very prominent gold wedding ring. I might have been overly critical, but to me everything about him screamed Not From Here!