Part 20 (1/2)
”I stopped because I wasn't getting nowhere.”
I gave him a number of nods, each one meant to be a strand of false hope. I said, ”It's unusual, though, to see that much diligence up to a point, and then almost nothing after that. Wouldn't you agree, detective?”
He obviously had not been called detective in a long time. It brought him up short. Made him blink. ”You wanna tell me what in particular you're complaining about?”
”What I just said. Looking through the file, it was almost as if something happened somewhere along the line and you decided to close down the investigation.”
”I didn't close it. I handed it off to Pooch.”
”Detective Iacupucci.”
”That's right. Pooch.”
”Did he do anything with it?”
”Don't know. I left.”
”And no one ever got in touch with you after you left?”
”That's right.”
”That strike you as curious?”
”I don't know. I never been retired before.”
I smiled, as if he had made a good joke. He did not smile back. He was looking at me warily. It was probably the look he had developed when he was about to arrest somebody and was thinking that a weapon might get pulled. I stopped smiling. It wasn't doing me any good.
”File lists every friend, friend of friend, waiter, shopkeeper you talked to, but you never so much as mentioned the Gregorys. Why was that, detective?”
”Case as serious as that one,” he said, ”you wanna be careful what you put down. Never know who's gonna read it.”
”You thought the wrong people might read the police file?”
”I think, counselor,” he said, dragging out the last word, paying me back for calling him detective, ”things work in funny ways back in the Bay State. The Cape, in particular.”
”So you were doing a little preventive maintenance, is that it? Deciding what should go in the file and what shouldn't.”
”Something like that.”
”And the chief, did you tell the chief what you didn't put in the file?”
”Depends. After a while you don't keep reporting that you got nothing to report.”
I tried to keep the questions coming. Hit him with another as soon as he was done answering the one before. It was a basic courtroom technique. ”You tell him what the people at the Gregory compound said?”
”Don't recall.”
”He told me you couldn't find everyone who was there that night.”
”So?”
”So you couldn't find everyone; you must have found someone.”
Landry drank his beer, staring along the barrel of his bottle while he followed the logic.
”Who did you find?” I pressed.
”Gimme some names and I'll tell you.”
”Peter Martin; Ned, Jamie, and Cory Gregory; Paul McFetridge; Jason Stockover.”
”That it?”
”A girl named Patty Afantakis.”
He didn't ask who she was. He asked if I had talked to her. I said I had.
”What did she tell you?”
”Nothing. She wouldn't tell me anything, except it was clear she was there.”
He nodded. ”Anybody else?”
”Patty said she was with a girl named Leanne.”
”You talk to her?”
”Nope. Haven't found her yet.”
Landry finished off the bottle and threw it on the lawn. His own lawn. I looked at mine and saw I had barely gotten beyond the first sip.
”All right, counselor,” he said, his voice suddenly very taut, ”you want to know what was going on? Fine, I'll tell you. Ned Gregory was f.u.c.king his babysitter, that's what. His whachucallit, his au pair. Eighteen-year-old beauty who happened to be the daughter of a guy who owns a nationwide chain of movie theaters and contributes a zillion bucks a year to all the Gregory campaigns. And Ned's got a wife and three kids and being groomed to run for some office himself and there he is, layin' pipe with the girl who's supposed to be watching his children while his wife's away. You get the picture now, pal?”
”So you were covering up.”
”You wanna call it that. It didn't have nothin' to do with the investigation. So you put something down in writing, all it does is embarra.s.s the people who pay for the Little League fields and the skating rink and underwrite the summer Pops concerts, what's it gonna get you?”
”You don't put it down, maybe it gets you retirement in Hawaii.”