Erasing Memory Part 13

"No thanks, I'm coffee'd out already. I'll see you upstairs."

Leaving Swetsky in the lobby, MacNeice pushed open the stairwell door, looked at his watch, waited for the second hand to reach three, then took off. This morning he needed to grab at the railing to haul himself up the stairs. At his floor, his chest heaving and feeling slightly nauseous, he looked at his watch. "Sixteen seconds. Ah well, considering..."

Aziz was already online and Vertesi, with his feet propped up on the edge of his desk, was holding forth about something.

"I didn't mean to interrupt, Vertesi. Go on," MacNeice said, as he dropped his notebook on his desk and switched on his computer.

Aziz turned around, smiling. "Vertesi was just telling me about his date, sir."

"How did it go?" MacNeice swung his chair around to face him.

"Aw, well.... Well, it was great, actually." Vertesi took his bottle of water in hand but didn't drink.

"He's being coy, sir. He told me he may be in love with a girl he met at the lake." Aziz turned back to her computer.

"Jesus, Aziz!" Vertesi raised his hands in a what-the-f.u.c.k gesture that both his colleagues were familiar with.

MacNeice waited for the moment to pa.s.s. "Perhaps shy shy is a better word, Aziz." is a better word, Aziz."

"You're right, sir, shy." shy." Aziz was keying something in and didn't turn around. Aziz was keying something in and didn't turn around.

"Hey, you two, any second Swetsky's gonna show up. He's been put on our team full-time by the deputy chief. He'll probably use his own desk, but we should give him a full briefing here."

"What the h.e.l.l is that about?" Vertesi said. "Wallace doesn't think we can crack this?"

"He's taking heat. What's the headline this morning-"Cops Stumped on Beach House Killing"? So you're probably right. This will signal that he's doing something more proactive. But Swetsky's one of us, and I'm happy to have him in our corner."

Vertesi didn't look so sure.

Soon Swetsky arrived, carrying four paper cups of coffee, a small stack of sugar packets, milk and cream cuplets and brown plastic stirrers. "I don't know how you guys take it, but for future reference, I'm double-double." He smiled, put the coffee tray down on the counter between Aziz and Vertesi and looked around for a chair.

"Michael, grab a chair for Swets."

Vertesi nodded and got up.

Swets took a look at the younger man's face and said, "Guys, I know this isn't what you would have chosen. I'm not that happy about it either. Apart from getting to work days-which is nice-I'd rather each of us work our own cases."

"Thanks for the coffee, Swets." Vertesi went to get the chair.

"Yes, thank you," Aziz said. "I'm coffee'd out, though."

"That's what your boss said. Yeah, well, it's there if you feel like it later. You can stick it in the microwave-it's not half bad, but not like that expresso Mac makes."

"That's espresso espresso, with an S." MacNeice stood up, clapped him on both shoulders and gestured for the big man to take his chair. "Take a load off and let's get started."

He took out his notebook and, glancing at the page for the spellings, wrote on the board in red marker: Gheorghi Borisov and Hrista Popov, Bulgarians-potential syringe connection Gheorghi Borisov and Hrista Popov, Bulgarians-potential syringe connection.

Vertesi slid a new chair into the s.p.a.ce beside the whiteboard as MacNeice looked back at Swetsky sipping slowly from his cup. "A lot's happened since the beach house, so we'll bring you up to speed and then determine next steps."

It was after eleven a.m. before the three detectives had finished briefing their new colleague and-as each was party to new information-each other. Then MacNeice divided the day's efforts equally between them, giving Swetsky the job of tracking down the doctor who owned the beach house. When he finally put the marker back in its tray, it was 11:48 a.m.

"I'm hungry. I'm going over to Marcello's-who's coming?"

"I'm off to the doctor's office. I figure the best time to nose around is over the lunch hour, so I'll catch a sandwich on the way back." Swetsky hauled himself out of the chair and, in a move more graceful than MacNeice thought possible for such a big man, he was out of the cubicle and gone.

"I've kind of got a date. I've got some more questions to ask the Ingram girl." Vertesi stood, sheepish, avoiding their eyes.

MacNeice looked down at Aziz, who said, "I'm going to let Bozana know about the two Bulgarians, which will take a few minutes, but then I'd be happy to join you."

"Perfect. I'll go down to the lab to see if there's anything on the Range Rover. Be back in ten."

THEY TOOK THE LAST BOOTH, nearest the kitchen. While it was the busiest area of the restaurant, it was also the most private, since the only people going by were wait staff.

The special was Marcello's mother's handmade sage-and-goat-cheese ravioli. The food arrived as Aziz was telling MacNeice more about Vertesi's new girlfriend.

"He apparently walked right up to the cottage-or as he describes it, the family resort-and asked her to go out with him." She stopped for her first bite of ravioli and hummed approvingly. "They went for a walk-this is so good-and they sat out on a point and talked for two and a half hours."

"About the case?" A stupid question, MacNeice thought, too late.

"Initially it seemed like no, that this was Vertesi responding to the male urge to mate in springtime, but in the end they did. She actually remembered seeing the boat-two boats, in fact. The second one arrived later, anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e a few hundred yards and just sat there."

"Two boats. From the same marina?" MacNeice had barely touched his ravioli.

"Mac"-she stopped eating and looked up at him-"I thought you were starved."

"You're right. Of course, sorry, go on." He took a bite.

"She couldn't tell for sure, because it was dusk and she wasn't paying that much attention. But she remembered seeing a girl in the bow, her hand over the side, trailing in the water, and a man at the tiller of the outboard. She was fis.h.i.+ng off the end of the dock and saw them land at the beach. As you thought, he jumped out and carried her up towards the cottage, which is hidden behind the point-she can't see it from the dock."

She had managed to finish the ravioli between sentences, and now she picked up a piece of bread, broke off a bite-size chunk and swirled it around in the leftover sauce. Just before putting it in her mouth, she added, "Vertesi says she thought the girl was wearing a gown, because it looked so billowy and out of place. She a.s.sumed it was a honeymoon, except-and get this-the guy was in cut-off jeans or shorts." She smiled and popped the bread into her mouth. "She couldn't remember anything about the second boat other than there were four guys in it."

MacNeice had stopped eating again. Aziz dropped her hands to the table edge and said, "Are you okay?"

"I was just wondering where this takes us. Why didn't Vertesi mention this in the briefing with Swetsky? Was there anything else?"

"He wanted to tell you. If I hadn't teased him he probably would have, but you know Vertesi-he's a big team player and Swetsky coming on probably threw him. He's having lunch with her today. She's a teacher. He took a shot of Ruvola with him to see if she'd recognize him."

"Romance and police work usually don't mix well, but maybe Vertesi will prove that theory wrong," MacNeice said, finally digging into his ravioli.

SEVENTEEN.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL THE POLICE what you saw?" Vertesi was sitting in the park opposite Rachel's school. They had just finished sandwiches and orange sodas and some breezy conversation about life in high school. what you saw?" Vertesi was sitting in the park opposite Rachel's school. They had just finished sandwiches and orange sodas and some breezy conversation about life in high school.

"When I heard that my parents had talked with the cops-that was the first time I thought what I had seen could mean something. I was out on the dock fis.h.i.+ng when I saw the boat land, and it wasn't till the next day that I heard the girl had been murdered." She waved away some flies that had landed on the sandwich wrappers.

"Still, why not call the police once you'd figured it out?" Vertesi wasn't being aggressive; he was simply determined to find out the answer to something that had been bothering him.

"To be honest, Michael, I didn't want to get involved. My mother and father and especially my brothers didn't want me to get involved. Just before you showed up, I'd made up my mind to call when I got back to the city." She scrunched the wrappers into a tight ball and tossed it into the trash bin five feet away. It didn't touch the rim.

"Three points." He met her eyes. "So is that why you agreed to go for a walk with me?"

"No. Well, yes, I realized if I went for a walk with you I could handle it right then and there...." She smiled to soften it.

"I'll need you to make a formal statement. I hope you don't mind."

"I don't mind. Will you be there?"

"I can be there if you want me to-or not." He was roughing up the gravel in front of the bench, playing soccer with the ring from a pop can.

"I do want you there." She said it so firmly that he rocked her slightly with his shoulder, and she pushed back.

"Where'd the second boat go?"

"I don't know. It was getting dark and I hadn't caught anything, so I walked back to see if I could get some leftover dinner. I knew that my brothers and their wives would be finished eating and off doing something else. I didn't feel like making nice-nice." She was staring at one of her students, who was walking with his arm around a girl.

"You didn't hear it, or the other one leaving the beach in front of the cottage?"

"No, I ate something, and since Mom and Dad were upstairs in their room watching television, I turned on the stereo, poured a gla.s.s of wine and started marking the last of my end-of-term exams on the couch."

"How soon can you come in?"

"After school today. Will you meet me?"

"Meet you? I'll come back and get you!" He stood up and offered her his hand.

The teenager and his girlfriend walked by just in time to catch it. "Whoa, Miss Ingram, get a load of you," he teased. The girlfriend smacked him but giggled as they pa.s.sed.

"Now you've done it, Detective Vertesi. How am I going to live this one down? By one thirty this will be all over the school."

"Let me walk you to the door, teach." Remembering the photo of Ruvola, he pulled it out of his inside pocket. "Ever see this guy around the lake or the marina? There's a kiss in it for you if you have."

Rachel c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at him but studied the mug shot, then shook her head. "No, I've never seen him."

"My mother would tell you-will tell you-that I'm actually very shy, and mostly I am," Vertesi said, to mitigate the line about the kiss. "I'll be here when, at three thirty?"

"You can be here then, but I won't be out until four fifteen. I'll meet you on the steps over there."

"Oh, and one last question-what do you make of Old Man Gibbs? The guy snapped when I started asking questions."

"He's always snapping. Since Florence died he's apparently been weirder than ever. My brothers think he's off his meds, but I honestly don't know. Most of us just avoid his place."

"Thanks. That's it-no more questions."

They shook hands at the door. The gesture was greeted by loud catcalls and whistles and someone yelling, "Don't be stingy, Miss Ingram. Kiss the man!" followed by more shouts and laughter.

She grinned at him, then turned and climbed the stairs without looking back.

HEADING OFF TO G GIBBS M MARINA, Vertesi forced himself to switch focus from Rachel to the second boat. He needed to find out whether Thompson or Gibbs had just forgotten to mention it or if there was a reason they hadn't. Did the two boats go out separately and the second one return on its own? If that was the case, there was nothing to report; they were separate contracts. Though his warrant wouldn't be issued before Tuesday morning, Vertesi thought it wouldn't hurt to ask the mechanic about the marina's rental logs and how thorough they were.

As he rounded the bend to the marina, a Canada goose led her four comical goslings into his path. He slowed, then stopped and waited for them to clear. As the geese were crossing the road, Gibbs came out of the tuck shop, looked towards Vertesi's car and then headed for his mechanic's workshop. "So much for being discreet," Vertesi said to himself.

Parking in front of the workshop's open doors, he shut down the engine and grabbed his notebook. For no reason that he could later put a finger on, he checked that his service revolver was on his hip with the restraining strap unsnapped.

"Mr. Gibbs, can I have a word with you?" he called as he came around the side of his vehicle. There was a flash of white inside the dark garage and he was blown back against the fender, landing face up on the hood. Struggling to get up, he rolled over onto his side and slid down the front of the car, ending up face down in the dirt. Cigarette b.u.t.ts and gravel stuck to his clothes as he rolled over on his back, to find Gibbs standing over him with a sixteen-gauge shotgun cracked open. The man was reaching into the thigh pocket of his fatigues for another sh.e.l.l.

"Smarta.s.s little f.u.c.ker. Ain't so smart now, are ya?" Gibbs spat at him but missed.

Vertesi felt a sticky mess on the left side of his abdomen and lifted his hand to find it drenched. He held it up towards Gibbs in an attempt to ward off the next round, and Gibbs laughed. "f.u.c.king wop wop wop. Who's the smart f.u.c.ker now?"

Vertesi tried to get enough leverage to sit up, to get away, but his legs slid helplessly beneath him. His right hand was pinned under his body; he struggled to pull it out, gasping for every breath. He reached for his weapon.

"You take s.h.i.+t all day for f.u.c.kin' years and then-bang-you hit a f.u.c.kin' wall and it's over!" Gibbs was screaming now, spewing saliva as he rushed to get the words out. "This morning, f.u.c.ker, I hit the wall!" The sh.e.l.l was sliding into the chamber when he realized what Vertesi was doing. He quickly snapped the barrel shut.

Vertesi fired upwards. The round tore into the old man's neck and swung him sideways. Wide-eyed with shock, Gibbs lowered his weapon and clutched at the gaping wound, now gurgling with blood. He stumbled backwards, regained his balance and, his finger still on the trigger, tried to raise the barrel of the shotgun. Vertesi fired again, blowing off Gibbs's Caterpillar cap and most of the top of his head. The man dropped to the ground, still clinging to the shotgun. Vertesi rolled slightly to his left to see Gibbs choking on blood as if he was gargling.

Realizing he was going to pa.s.s out, Vertesi held up his weapon once more and fired the remaining rounds in the air, hoping Dennis or someone would come. Then he lay back, tried to breathe slowly, and looked at the soft white clouds above. "Beautiful," he managed to say before he sank into darkness.

IT WAS JUST PAST FOUR P.M. when Swetsky met them outside the surgical unit. Several uniformed officers were standing nearby in a cl.u.s.ter, and off to the side was a woman in her thirties with her arm around an older woman; MacNeice took them to be Vertesi's mother and sister. The father, a tall, elegant man with a thick moustache, was at the water cooler filling a tiny paper cup.

Swetsky took MacNeice aside as Aziz went over to the family. "He's lost a lot of blood-that isn't good-but the round tore through the flesh on the left side of his stomach. There's no kidney or spleen damage and the ribs weren't shattered, so the lungs are fine. But they need to stabilize him before they operate."

"What the h.e.l.l happened, Swets?" MacNeice looked over his shoulder at Aziz; she had her arms around Vertesi's sister, whose shoulders were heaving. The mother stood sobbing quietly next to her husband, who was looking down at the two paper cups of water he was holding.

"Dennis Thompson-he's the mechanic-had gone to get something in the back of the shop when he heard the blast and the place lit up. He had been cleaning the shotguns, said Gibbs complained that they hadn't been cleaned properly at the end of hunting season the year before. Thompson had finished the single-barrel that was Gibbs's wife's. If he'd done one of the others first-the ten- or the twelve-gauge double-barrel-Vertesi would've been finished. When he went down, Gibbs had one in the chamber and two more in his pocket. The guy had flipped; he would have used them all if Vertesi hadn't taken him out."

"Was it the mechanic who called it in?"

"Yeah, and the kid is lucky for another reason. Out on one of the docks was a..." Swetsky pulled out his notebook to check. "... a Dr. Van der Hilst-he's an oncologist over at St. Joe's. He was just about to set out for an afternoon's sailing when it happened. The call went in to Search and Rescue out on Kendal Island, and within eleven minutes the medivac helicopter had landed on the road. Twenty-seven minutes later he was here."

"Christ almighty, and bleeding all the time."

"Yeah, but Van der Hilst had plugged pretty much all the wadding from the marina's first aid kit into the wound, and then he got some more from his boat. He'd packed and wrapped it so well the medivac guys just put in a plasma drip and got him the h.e.l.l out of there."

"What about Gibbs?"

"Vertesi fired two rounds-one took out his neck and the other the top of his head. Then he pumped the rest into the sky to get some attention. h.e.l.l, they must have thought a war had broken out on that road." Swetsky seemed impressed.

"But what went wrong?" MacNeice saw the doors swing open. A young woman rushed through, her face contorted by fear as she looked around frantically.

"Van der Hilst said Gibbs was a time bomb, and n.o.body wanted to be around when he went off. He'd lost half his boat storage and moorage business-and all of his profit-because he would flip out and tear into his customers. The doc once suggested to Gibbs that he see a neurologist about his headaches and mood swings. Gibbs told him to go f.u.c.k himself and walked away. His wife had been sick with cancer for three years. When she died last winter, he just got weirder. I asked him if Gibbs was medicated and he said maybe, and then he added, 'Maybe not legally.' He figures Vertesi was just the last straw."

"Can you send someone out there to get the rental diary or logbook? I don't want that going south on us while we deal with all this." MacNeice put his hand on the big man's shoulder.